


Shape

by tori1116



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Arsenal Becomes...Arsenal, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Death in Every Chapter, Dismemberment, Everything Hurts, Heavy Angst, I only keep everything that is useful and throw away or change what's not, I'm Truly Sorry This Time, Implied past domestic abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Just The Stuff of Depression, Language, Lots of Hurt, M/M, N52 Storylines, Not Really Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Character Death, Poor Dude Can't Catch a Break, Possessed Jason, Sorry Kori, Sorry Roy, Sort of major character death, The Rise of Arsenal References, The Untitled Story but Full of Despair and Gay Love, Titans Hunt References, Total Rip-Off of The Rootshaw Arc in POI S5, sorry Jason, sort of mind control, sort of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-10-07 19:29:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 52,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17371979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tori1116/pseuds/tori1116
Summary: Take place after RHATO Vol.1 #18--After the event in Requiem, Jason leaves Bruce in Ethiopia and flies alone to the Himalayas in an attempt to seek answer from the Chamber of All. But before he could get there, he is attacked and abducted by the League of Assassins.#I was looking for something to occupy myself while I'm still struggling to put together the continuation of my Cop#Jayroy story. And then I remembered this old fic of mine, and thought it would be a good idea to translate it. Only it sort of became a remake, actually--The original version of this story is finished, but I'm not so sure how many things I'm gonna change, or even if I would finish this translation. This is much more tiring than I thought.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Soon as he came back to consciousness, he found himself strapped to a surgical bed.

Even without the constrict, he could barely struggle. He was in a mass of pain, and his body was far beyond numb, it was as though it had fallen right past sleep and down into the eternal slumber.

In a frenzy of anxiousness, his mind rewound rapidly to that fatal moment, where he had been defeated and trampled, his hope had become shattered as his body had been broken apart bit by bit. The cracking of his own bones had symphonized with the continuous smashing, the continuous bashing, the continuous laughing--composed into one grave melody that had seemed like it would just go on forever and ever.

Except it didn’t last forever. It had ended eventually.

Eventually, everything had just sort of faded away, including all pains that the crowbar had forced into his body. The mad laughter that had infiltrated his hearing had gone down, easing slowly to the deep of his brain, until it had been freeze-framed into a timeless smile of an old silent movie. Never before had he been surrounded by such quietness, such peacefulness. He could hear no more laughing, no more smashing, no vague, indistinct noises of someone crying in despair from a distance. There had been no more sound save for his own one, ringing deeper than his teenage tone, murmuring vengeance under the sea of raging darkness.

Unlike what had happened before, this time, there hadn’t got much blood on the scene. Or at least there hadn’t much more than usual.

Apart from the extreme numbness, he didn’t sense anything wrong in his physical state. Although the pain was great (--It was from the previous fight, he reckoned), it wasn’t too bad; in fact, he thought he could find use of it.

Pain could be quite useful, as long as you know how to use it--just like the man had once taught him.

_“If you ever lost the feeling of your own body during a fight, try finding the pain—it is likely you’re hurt, and it is always the pain that would stick with you the longest even when your other feelings have gone. So you find the pain, you find the injured parts of your own body. Then you focus on those parts and their extension. You pull at it, follow it all the way--until again, you can find your whole body and have it back at your command.”_

He was just about to follow those pains and let them lead him back to his body, but a hand was extended to him from his blind spot and something was being injected into his veins. In an instant, the pains were taking away, and whatever ties that had been left between him and his body were severed.

Lying with his face up, he could see nothing but the blinding light upon him, until a man in a white lab coat entered his view.

“It’s not going to hurt, don’t worry,” the man started kindly, holding a scalpel and some sort of microchip in his gloved hands. “--You won’t even remember it exists.”

His head was being moved gently to one side. He glared his eyes around, wildly agitated and wanting to see what the man was doing. The scalpel reached the place behind his ear. Although he couldn’t feel it or even see it quite clearly, he knew that his skin was being cut open.

Since he couldn’t do it with his own two hands, he tried to murder the man with his eyes.

Mistaking his murderous intent for impatience, the man reassured him, eyes squinting in concentration while he was wielding a pair of tweezers to place something under Jason’s skin, “Just—a moment, Mr. Todd. It will all be over soon.”

 

***

 

Upon the steady rhythm of vital sign monitor that was beeping close at his side, he heard someone saying, “His chart seems normal, but he still isn't awake. What if he’s…”

“He’s fine,” another voice came in and cut the Doctor short. Jason could remember this voice, low and growly. His hands twitched slightly under the sheet upon him.

Standing somewhere in the operating room, the man with which Jason used to be on the same side was saying, “—The substance we used may not be able to grant him immortality, but it’s more than enough to sustain him through the surgery. The operation is a success, Doctor. His condition is stable, even his wounds were cured.”

“That said, but what we did…what we’ve put in him--implanting something like that in somewhere this close to his _brain stem_ —it’s…it’s extremely risky. There’s a good chance he may not survive--”

“He’ll survive. Because he’s nothing if not a survivor.”

Through the slit of his eyelids, he saw the humanoid tiger drew toward him.

“Get up, Jason, I know you can,” said Bronze Tiger, one of Jason’s old tutors. “What are you waiting for? Someone to give you a hand?”

He stared down at Jason sternly, persuading him in the same way he used to persuade him to get through all those deadly trainings. “You don’t need a hand to pick you up. You can get up all by yourself.”

Jason didn’t get up. He stayed still on the surgical bed.

Seeing that he remained unresponsive to his words, a look of disappointment passed Ben’s face.

Only as he turned around to the Doctor, a pair of hands reached out in a flash, catching him by the neck and completely off guard.

For someone like Ben, it wouldn’t take them more than a half of a second to recover from shock and fight back. Since there’s little chance he could’ve won a fight against Bronze Tiger in such rough state, Jason didn’t pause and give Ben any response time. He finished his movement in one go.

 

***

 

Aside from all the medical equipment, there’s a floor mirror standing in the back of the room. His own set of uniform was placed on a chair next to it, folded neatly under his tactical helmet.

He stepped across the dead body and went to pick up his suit.

While he was dressing up, he wondered to himself if he should stick around, if he should find the others and make them pay for whatever the fuck they had done to him.

Part of him--the younger part with a hotter head—was eager to follow that idea. But he controlled his impulse, knowing that, even in normal circumstances, it would be a lousy idea to start a fight with Lady Shiva and all the other League members in their own turf; let alone now, when his limbs were all numb and heavy as if they might go on strike at any second.

Most of his strength had run out after he had sprung up from the bed and snapped Ben’s neck. If the Doctor had ever been through any sort of martial art training, or even just moved faster, he might’ve even escaped him.

Under the chair sat his own combat boots. Jason put them on once he was dressed, then reached for his red helmet.

With the helmet in his hand, he stood looking into the mirror before him.

Cranking his head to one side, he found that there was a gauze pad sticking behind his ear. Automatically, his free hand moved up to peel it open.

The scar lied upon somewhere beyond his field of vision, somewhere on the back of his head. He pressed his fingers against its raw, bulging surface, and all of a sudden, everything just _came together_.

The voices of all and the voices of one--drumming enlightenment through his ear. His senses were opened to an infinite glory, an infinite power--an infinite of infinity--

And at last, he saw--

At last, he _knew_ —

The mirror was broken in a crash. Jason stood numbly for a while, perturbed and somewhat confused.

Retracted his fist from the broken glass, he put on the helmet and moved back to the Doctor, who was lying face down in a puddle of blood.

Drew out the sword he had taken from Ben’s body of the Doctor’s back, he held it firmly in his hand and headed to escape.

 

***

 

Someone found him before he could find his way out of 'Eth Alth'eban.

He whisked around to the familiar voice that called out eagerly behind him. While his muscle relaxed slightly at the expected sight of the red-haired man, his face was stern with exasperation.

Drooping the sword at the side of his body, Jason demanded, “What are you doing in here?”

“Good to see you too, Jaybird,” replied Roy ironically with a dry huff of laughter.

He stayed unmoved, still feeling a bit raw after everything that had just happened. It’s not that Jason wasn’t happy to see him, but the sacred city of 'Eth Alth'eban was a dangerous place. No one in their right minds would come anywhere near it, not even himself; unless there’s something he really wanted, and he could say for certain that he no longer wanted anything from the League of Assassins.

Although he wasn’t sure why Bronze Tiger and the other League members would have ambushed him and brought him to their headquarter, he knew by his heart it was between him and them.

“You have no business being in here,” he said to Roy gravely. “If the League caught you, they’ll gut you like a pig.”

Roy curled his mouth in a way that could always bring up a certain fretfulness in Jason. “Thank you _so_ much--for the friendly welcome and the display of complete faith in my capabilities, man. My heart hadn’t felt such warmth in a long time. I knew I miss you for a reason.”

For someone who was standing in one of the most dangerous places on earth in a full battle gear, the redhead sure emanated a lot of easiness.

Before Jason could response, he came aware of the pattering of feet treading toward their direction. He yanked at Roy’s arm immediately and jostled him into a corner where they would be unseen by the guards.

Standing with his back against the wall, he pecked his ears at the steps, hands tightened warily around the sword. Roy was right at his side, holding his own railgun with equal caution.

The guards had passed. Jason gave it a few more seconds before stretching out his head to take a look at the corridor.

Seeing the coast was clean, he turned around and signaled Roy to follow his lead.

Threading through the corridor for a moment, he began to falter. A hand reached out promptly to steady him.

“Still wonder why I’m here?” Roy was saying.

As he drew close and heaved Jason’s arm over his shoulders, his shaggy red hair brushed against the side of Jason’s face--greasy as if he hadn’t washed it for days, with a mixed scent of smell of engine oil, and gunpowder, and something weirdly like static electricity, and above all, himself.

Again, the fretfulness stirred him. Jason let out a grunt in reply, shook away the loose lock from his face and turned to shoot Roy a sharp look, daring the guy to say more.

To his surprise, Roy wasn’t wearing the smug, aggravating look Jason had expected him to wear; his unshaven face looked worried, in fact; and his eyes were red and hollowed with fatigue.

Jason wondered how long it had been, since he had walked out on Bruce in Ethiopia, and headed alone to seek truth from the All-Caste at their home in the Himalayas only was attacked by the League of Assassins on the halfway. How long it had been, since he had left his friends, leaving them to worry what might happen to him, or if he would ever come back.

“I can handle myself,” he replied, but in a much moderate voice.

The distant tension over Roy’s body eased off as Jason leaned against him. He gave Roy’s shoulder a squeeze. Finding a smile drifting onto Roy’s face, the corner of his own mouth moved up despite himself.

 _It’s good seeing you,_ he was about to say what he should’ve said in the first place. Only a spark of pain exploded in his brain and the only thing that left his mouth was a sharp bark of agony.

“Jason!”

The panic cry from Roy rose right to his ear, at the same time Jason’s sword slipped away from his grasp and hit the floor in a clank. His feet sank, and presently, he was dragged into darkness.

 

***

 

In his feverish dream, he was captured by many noises (Somewhere between here and then, Lady Shiva was saying, _“He won’t join us.” “Not by choice, he won’t,”_ Ben agreed with her. _“—That’s why Talia had prepared us with **this**.”_). The noises didn’t clear away altogether but continued following him even when he woke up, whispering softly and quietly inside his ears.

Right upon his half-lidded eyes, an light tube was glaring brightly at him from the celling. He stared back at it for a moment, captivated by the way it buzzed and blinked upon him in a fixed rhythm.

“What is it?” someone spoke up, expelling the remain of his dream and reviving him to lucidity.

He was lying flat on his bed in the home base, with someone’s hand resting upon his shoulder. Jason didn’t need to look to know whose hand it was. He could reckon Roy’s hands--large and callused with long, nimble fingers—just as easily as he could reckon Kori and Roy’s voices.

“It’s…some sort of electronic microchip.” Roy clutched his hand slightly with anxiety. When Jason turned his eyes around, he could see Roy holding up something in his other hand. “--Those damn sons of bitches have been using it to send electric shock to his brain.”

“But to what end?” Kori asked, with indignation burning brightly in her compassionate tone. Except it weren’t just compassion or indignation Jason could hear in her words. There’s also something else, something independent of emotions and found completely on logics.

She tried to play ignorance, but everyone in here should know the Tamaranean princess was way too smart to not have figured out the answer already. ( _It didn’t matter if she had figured it out. He could take care of her._ )

“It doesn’t matter,” Roy replied bluntly. “He’s safe now, that’s the only thing that matters.”

Upon the drawer that was standing at the side of his bed, Jason found that there was a plate of surgical equipment and a pair of plastic gloves; all of those things were covered with blood.

He watched it as Roy turned around to put the microchip inside the drawer. Then the sleep regained its grip upon him and his eyes drifted close.

 

***

 

When he open his eyes this time, he was no longer dull with drowsiness. He felt refreshed, reinvigorated, _revived_.

There had been millions of things running over him throughout his crimson limbo between sleeping and waking. All dreams he had dreamt--all truth and tale--twisting and turning through the crankle of his brain, he couldn’t remember them now. What he had seen, what he had been showed ( _In a rain of fire, everything fell and descended into a great pile of ashes. There’s nothing upon the scorched ground. Not even ghosts_ ), they had all slipped away.

The voices were still with him though, right there in the back of his head. Only they couldn’t be.

Whatever that had been implanted inside him—whatever evil spirits he had picked up from the sacred city of 'Eth Alth'eban--it had been removed by Roy. He couldn’t remember everything but this much he could remember.

He mustn’t be hearing the voices. (He heard them-- _Let go,_ they said.)

Somewhere near his bed, Kori was saying, “There’s something wrong with him, Roy. You can’t just keep pretending that there isn’t.”

“He’s hurt. That’s what’s wrong,” replied Roy stoutly. “—Whatever tortures they’ve been giving him in the past two weeks--it’s…horrible, I’m sure. But it’s not like it’s going to change him or anything--He’s a tough boy, Kori. If he can recover from death, he can recover from tortures too. And let’s not forget, he has us in here, we can help him through it. The three of us--we can fix it.”

“But what if—what if there’s nothing to fix. What if what they did to him is something worse than any torture any of us has known of.”

With a note of dismay in her voice, she said, a hand reaching out to Roy who had his face turned aside stubbornly as if it could save him from seeing the truth, “--I know how much he means to you. He means a lot to me too. But you have to consider the fact that it’s already too late, that what happened to him has irrevocable consequences.”

Jason knew it mustn’t be easy for her to say it, and he also understood her concerns. Anyone in their right senses would be concerned by this. And unlike Roy, who was a hopeless idiot, she didn’t believe in self-deception.

If he was in Kori’s shoes, he would be concerned too. Roy thought they could fix thing but they couldn’t.

The two people turned to him in surprise as he moved slowly to sit up on his bed.

With a torching gush of anger rising from the back of his head, he said, “It’s always too late when it comes to me, isn’t it.”

“Jay--” Roy started, but Jason ignored him, eyes fixing coldly on the princess.

“Not even the great Batman could be fast enough and do anything before it’s too late. Not even he could fix things--So why the hell the two of you can, honestly. Why the hell would you even bother to try anyway,” he retorted with a biting laugh. “—It’s not like we’re actually friends or a team or whatever. We’re just these three pathetic people messing around, a sidekick who couldn’t even keep himself alive, a dispensable drunk and a royal _slave._ ”

As he watched the beautiful face of Kori distort into a hurt expression, a sense of pitiless triumph graced him.

For a moment, she stood frozen, but it was unlike her to just stand there and take it. There’s no doubt she would soon come back and repay Jason for his cruel remark. Jason could already see the fury waking up in her crystal eyes.

Before Kori could reply to him with anything, a hand reached out abruptly and grasped Jason by his collar.

Roy came up at him and snarled, “I know you’re hurt, buddy. But that doesn’t give you any right to say stuff like that. And if you ever dare to tell me that’s really what you think--I’m gonna break your damn mug right here right now.”

His own hand moved up instinctively to take Roy’s wrist and held it in a rough hold. With every intent to fight, he glared up, only was stunned by how angry—and _hurt_ \--the redhead actually looked like.

Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who was taken aback by Roy’s violence reaction. While he and Roy were stuck grabbing roughly at each other, Kori stood frozen on the side, the uprising fury in her eyes was long gone and replaced by concern and uncertainty.

All three of them fell into a still silence. Until a while later, Kori spoke up dimly, “I should go out and see if I could find anyone who may know something about the microchip we found.”

“Yeah, sure,” replied Roy abstractedly, his glare at Jason persisted.

Giving each one of them a doleful look, Kori turned around and exited the room.

Jason eased his hold upon Roy’s wrist. In a while, Roy let go of him too. “…I’m sorry,” he began in a low voice.

“Is the notorious Red Hood really apologizing or am I dreaming,” Roy responded, dryly and coldly, hands hanging rigid at his sides.

He really was angry.

Unsettled, Jason averted his gaze.

It’s not that Roy was horrifying when he was getting angry; unlike him, or even Kori, he had neither the power to go into a sudden solar flare explosion, nor even the energy to drag the whole world down in his own misery. There’s nothing especially horrifying about his anger, nothing dangerous or menacing. Even in his angriest state, a Roy was still a Roy, hardly as much a menace to others as the menace he could be to himself. So it’s not that Jason was fazed by his anger, it’s just that he had never had Roy’s anger directed at him, and he knew he wouldn’t be getting so angry if Jason hadn’t cut him to the quick with his cruel words.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said. It’s not—I didn’t mean to sound like an asshole.”

There came a pause, short but agonizing. Then Roy replied, “When you put it that way.”

Watching the look on Roy’s face grow softened, a sense of relief swayed upon him.

He shifted and made space for the redhead as he turn to sit down on the edge of his bed, letting the other man lean his side against his shoulder without putting up the pretenses and act like he was annoyed by the physical contact.

At the moment, he was rather eager for reconciliation, and although he wasn’t going to admit it, he did grow accustomed to the physical contact Roy was so deeply keen on.

Eased against Roy’s side, he asked softly with some amusement, “Are you really going to punch me in the face?”

“It’s better me than our all-too-powerful princess,” replied Roy simply.

To be honest, he didn’t think Kori would punch him for what he had said. She probably would just repay him with some stern words and went away.

After a moment of thought, he started, “You know Kori’s right.” Roy turned and looked at him with a dismal stare. “They’ve done something to me—Bronze Tiger and Lady Shiva and the others—There’s something…they put a chip inside me, to mess with my head.”

“I know,” Roy replied hastily. “I know, that why I’ve removed it. They can’t mess with your head anymore.”

But still, there’s something wrong inside him. He could feel it. The irreversible process, when everything fell gradually into the heat death.

He could sense it.

“You’re safe now,” Roy said, putting a hand over Jason’s. “I’ve saved you.”

He stared down dully at Roy’s hand. Then again, he rose up his eyes, regarding the redhead in skepticism. “You’re joking, right?” he asked in reply, lips twisting up slightly into a incredulous smile. There’s that violent surge of wrath again, soaring in the back of his head.

The pure absurdity of Roy’s words amazed him. “--Are you really this stupid you would actually believe it? That you can save me and make me _safe_?”

Roy tightened his hand around his.

Came to witness the hurt revive in his eyes, Jason wanted to stop himself before he could fully ruin the harmony between them. He didn’t want to say any of those things he said--Except he did. Except he just wanted to look right into Roy’s eyes and cut him open with his unforgiving words.

He wanted to punish him, for his naivety, for his stupidity, for having the _gall_ to trying to _trick_ him into believing his cursed words.

 _How come you save me from anything when no one could—_ He felt an urge to say-- _How the fuck could **you** , someone so weak and pathetic that he couldn’t even save himself from his own misery, save **the unsavable Jason Todd**?_

But that’s not—that’s not true. Jason clutched his hands into fists.

He didn’t really want to say thing like this. That’s not what he thought. All of these words, including the words he had said to Kori, they weren’t him ( _Only they were. They were the words of anger. And wasn’t anger always a vital part of him?_ )—No. No. He didn’t want to say any of those things. And he certainly didn’t want to hurt Roy ( _Certainly not. What’s the point of hurting him if what he really should do was just destroy him and get rid of the obstruction_ ).

He forced down the vicious urge inside him with all his might. And yet, he could hear himself saying, voice bleak and gritty, “You didn’t save me. You can’t save me.”

“I’ve saved you,” Roy persisted, desperately. “I’ve saved you, just like you’ve saved me.”

After a pause, his expression grow mild. Then he worked his lips into a wry, humorous smile. “—Stop trying to fool me with your crap and just accept the fact that the great Roy Harper has just heroically saved your ass from the League of Assassins already.”

The persistence tranquilized him, so did the warm friendly humor; and that soft, gorgeous glint in his eyes.

The sudden flare inside Jason eased away, dissolving presently into the cool pond of greenness he was facing. He lifted up the corners of his lips slightly. “The great Roy Harper sounds like a cool guy. You know where I can find him?”

Roy returned with a toothy smile, “First thing tomorrow, I’m gonna sign you up to an expensive class that would teach you absolutely nothing but just some simple manners, which includes how to properly say thank you. I don’t care how much it costs, I’m using your credit card.”

Jason gave him an ironic look in response. “How were you managed to get us out of the castle anyway.”

“Because I’m awesome like that?” Roy shrugged. Jason raised an eyebrow at him. “—That crazy Cheshire cat who had assaulted us at our place the other day. I ran into her right after you’re down. She had a teleportation device with her. I took it.”

Jason hummed in acknowledgment.

With his hands holding Jason’s, Roy took a long moment of thought, before starting slowly, “Whatever happened…whatever those assholes have done to you—whatever effects that may have on you--we can fix it. We can get through it, Jay. As long as we stick together, we can handle anything.”

His lips twitched up into a grave smile of earnestness. “I know you don’t like to admit it, but the three of us—we’re a team. We’re _friends_. And I don’t…I don’t really have many friends, or anyone, left in my life save for you and Kori. So just…just put your faith in us, Jason, and trust that everything will be okay. Because I can’t—I’m not going to lose you. I just can’t.”

“Shit,” replied Jason, dryly and quietly. “It almost sounds like you’re into me.” He tried to brush it off, but he was afraid that the crack in his voice would have betrayed his roused emotions if the look on his face hadn’t done it already.

Roy let out a vague snort. “You know damn well I fucking love you but that’s not the point.”

Maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe it was exactly the point.

He rose his eyes and held with Roy’s for a brief moment.

When he tilted his head and moved forward, he could see there’s this look on Roy’s face, like he had been waiting for him in a long time.

His lips nestled against Roy’s lightly. Then Roy pushed forward, scratching him with the stubble on his jaw. So he pushed back, mouth opened quickly and drew out his tongue to meet Roy’s, dragging and twining it, until both of their tongues had gotten so caught up with each other that it seemed there’s no way out of their entanglement.

Without breaking the link between their lips, Roy shuffled onto his bed and fastened on to Jason, who, for once, didn’t hold back but just welcomed him with open heart.

A low, wonderful rumble escaped Roy’s throat, as Jason ran a hand from his strong thigh to his firm hip. He pressed down roughly in an instant, driving his own bulge against Jason’s to show him how much he wanted this, how much he wanted him.

Jason pushed back abruptly, biting Roy on his worn, moistened lips. The lips was broken slightly. A vague trace of metallic taste reached him. Roy gave out a low moan, as he licked at his small wound and sucked up the flecks of blood as though it would give him life.

Moment later, Roy drew back to look at him.

A soft, rusty murmur resounded from his swollen mouth, “What do you want, Jay. Just tell me--Anything. Anything at all.” In the bright light of the room, Jason could see his green eyes shimmering alluringly with a desperate shine of a martyr.

 _Everything--every single thing you can give._ Jason didn’t reply, not by word. Instead, he shifted wildly and overturned Roy, sinking his body into him in desperation.

 

***

 

He had a leg hooked around Jason’s and an arm rested over him, latching tightly on his side as though he was afraid Jason might run away and disappear in the middle of the night.

The light remained on, covering the room with its brightness. Lying on his bed in their home, Jason looked at the sleeping man beside him, and somehow, the sight of Roy’s peaceful face recalled the memory of someone he knew since long ago--long before the League, long before the All-Caste, long before the Batman.

He wasn’t sure what that was he saw on Roy’s face that could possibly remind him of his own mother. They didn’t look anything alike. The only thing they had in common was that they had both suffered from addition, but Roy was stronger than his addition, Jason knew that he was (-- _Until he wasn’t. Until he had gotten so shattered and broken, that he could no longer stand on his feet but fell right back into his suffering_ )--It couldn’t be the addition that reminded him of her. Jason guessed that it must have be the way they _loved_ , the way they gave away their loves; so desperately, so whole-heartedly, so irrevocably and so god-damned foolishly--that it made Jason feel scared for them just by watching them.

His parents had never been a model couple; there hadn’t been a day that his childhood house hadn’t been filled up with shouting and crying. But still, Jason knew that how much his mother had loved his father, even though she shouldn’t, even though when she had grown to hate him she had never stopped loving him.

And it was exactly her love--mistreated and trodden-down--that had driven her to drugs, to her eventual death.

He remembered how often he used to pick her up from the floor and cleaned her up after she had vomited all over herself, how many time he had had to spend to take care of her.

Nothing had worried him more at that point--not all the maniacs and serial killers who had been running the same streets with him, not even the shadowy Bat lurking somewhere in the night--but the thought of going home one day only to find his mother lying lifelessly in her own vomit.

He didn’t find her at home though. He found her in an alley, in fact.

Sometimes he wondered, would Mom still be alive if the cops didn’t take his dad away and leave her with nothing but a broken heart and a child she didn’t know how to look after by herself--or would she still be dead because Dad had finally made good of his promise and silenced her forever. ( _“Someday--”_ Dad used to say to him and Mom in a deep, angry grumble, _“Someday I’m gonna get rid of you both.”_ )

Foolish and naïve, he used to think that he would be enough for her, think that he would be enough to be her strength, her support, her safe haven. Only the drugs were her safe haven, the death was. Not him.

He studied Roy’s face through the bright light in the room. In a mixture of confusion and awe, he recalled the way Roy had offered himself to him only a moment ago--the way he always wore his heart out and offered it up--He couldn’t help but wondered just how much more hurt this person would have to suffer until he had learnt his lesson and understood that as long as you kept your heart out, you’re bound to have your heart hurt.

Eyes lingering on the redhead for another moment, Jason looked around to the light tube on the ceiling

With one of his hands stroking Roy’s arm absentmindedly, he watched the light buzzed and blinked upon him in a fixed rhythm, thinking that perhaps if he had stared at it long enough, he might be able to figure out its hidden pattern.

He wondered if he was already stuck in some sort of pattern, some immovable structure--where everything just kept repeating and repeating and repeating, like the never-ending circle between good and evil, between villains and heroes, between redemption and degeneration.

He wondered if he was, could he ever find his way out of it. ( _He could._ )

A soft, confused voice called to him and captured his attention. “Jay?”

Jason hummed in reply.

“Still awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Just turn off the light and go to sleep, you crazy person,” Roy slurred mindlessly, pressing his side tighter into Jason and fell back quickly into sleeping.

Staring blankly at the light tube for another moment, Jason then moved up, turned off the light and got back to bed.

He didn’t really feel like sleeping, never really liked sleeping. Not even when he was younger with less monsters chasing him in his dream. The house in Park Row had always been glutted with various noises, and sometimes, the silence in the manor had contented with such graveness that it was upsetting.

He didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to keep his eyes open.

Lying in the darkness, he found there’s this ill feeling in his heart that informed him something was going to happen soon, and whatever that was, he wanted to be awake to face it--sharp and clear-headed--therefore, he wouldn’t miss it when he shot it right in the face.

However, the warmth of the body at his side lulled his blood, and soon, Jason closed his eyes.

As if there’s nowhere safer for him in this world, Jason squeezed up tightly against Roy, nested his nose lightly into Roy’s hair and followed him into sleep.

 

***

 

“Jay? Jason?” Roy called to him on the communication device, voice turning gradually from the initial confused tone to an anxious one.

He didn’t make any response, just stood staring down at the woman, who looked so beautiful, so glorious, so sublime--with her rich red hair shading her lifeless face. Not even the death seemed to be able to diminish any of her beauty or dignity.

Her large eerie green eyes were wide open, brilliant as emeralds and completely out of the world, staring back at Jason from below, dull and full of pure confusion.

The frozen look on her face told Jason that she didn’t understand. But she should have. Given all of her ill experience against betrayal, she should have seen it coming, should have had her guard up, and yet, she hadn’t.

Poor Kori.

“Dammit, Jason, what the hell happened? Just say something already!” Again, Roy called out anxiously from the communicator, “—Fuck it. I’m tracking your signal right now. I’ll meet you there.”

The words jolted him awake. “Don’t,” he answered promptly, “Don’t get in here.”

“—What? Oh thank _fuck_. Thank fuck, Jason. You’re—are you okay? What happened?”

Eyes fixed on the orange color at his feet, he licked his cranking mouth. “Roy,” he began in a blank tone. “It’s Kori. She’s…She’s dead.”

“What?” Roy let out an sharp, incredulous utterance. “What—what are you--”

“She’s dead,” he repeated.

There came a pause. Then Roy started, his voice shaky, “No. It can’t…it can’t be.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

“But—what—How…how would this happen. Why--”

 _Why?_ It seemed like her eyes were also asking Jason the same question.

His hand tightened around his own gun.

“The League of Assassins. Bronze Tiger and Shiva—all of them--they came out of nowhere, we’re separated, when I got to her—She’s…she’s already dead. I can only escape with her body.”

He didn’t even bite on his tongue once while he lied.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Roy.”

“…Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

Even through the communicator, he could hear the tears in Roy’s voice.

“Why—it shouldn’t—why would something like this happen--?”

Jason didn’t know how to answer his question. He hoped that he did, but he didn’t.

In a slow, solemn manner, he crouched down and closed Kori’s eyes with his free hand.

When he had woken up this morning, everything had been fine. Only in a mere couple of hours, everything had turned right into shit. Why would something like this happen, he didn’t know, the only thing he knew was that it happened.

Kori had never come back since she had left home last night. When Jason had said that he had wanted to go out and find her, Roy had wanted to come along. But he had told Roy to stay home and continued his study on the electronic microchip instead. _"--Don’t worry, I’ll bring her home,"_ he had told Roy. And Roy, always easy to trust, had trusted him; just like Kori had trusted that he wouldn’t shoot her in the back.

He had left the ship in his full gear. In a moment, he had found Kori on a hill in the paradise island, sitting fixed with her knees drew up against her chest.

 _“What are you doing here, Princess,”_ he had started. “ _Couldn’t you hear there’s an idiot with a big mouth crying for you to come home?_

The sound of his voice didn’t seem to have surprised her. She had turned around slowly, looking at Jason over her shoulder. “ _I tried to see if I could find out anything about the chip. But I found nothing.”_

_“You had to go out an entire night for that?”_

_“I just thought that perhaps you’d want me to stay away from the ship for the night,”_ she had replied. _“I fear I might’ve offended you with what I said.”_

 _“No. You didn’t. You’re just being sensible. It’s me who acted like a jerk,”_ Jason had said, _“I shouldn’t have called you a slave. I know how much it hurt you.”_

She had averted her eyes.

With a thick veil of sorrow covering her face, she had stared down briefly before looking back to Jason. _“When you’re gone, Roy was desperate to find you, to have the three of us back together. And now, you’re back, Jason, and I’m glad that you are. But the thing that happened to you—It changed you in some way, I can see it. And I just don’t know where the changes may lead us.”_

Her green eyes had searched his face intently, but they hadn’t been able to see through his armor.

Disappointed, she had moved her eyes away, staring out into the wide stretch of landscape that was spreading generously before her. _“--All this time I’ve been in this planet--I’ve always found it strange that how constantly the people here seem to be blind to the beauty of this world.”_

With her back to Jason, the princess had asked quietly, _“Can’t you see, Jason? Can’t you see how beautiful everything is?”_

_“Yes, Kori.” He had kept his gaze fixed upon her. “--It’s beautiful.”_

Lost inside the grand view before her, she had never once turned back. Never had seen how the gun barrel had been directed at her, coldly and silently. Never had seen the moment when Jason had pulled the trigger.

Squatting down next to Kori, he stared at her closely, in an attempt to catch sight of the thing that had fascinated her so. There’s nothing he saw but a cold dead body.

Even with the heat inside her was drained away, the warming shade of her skin remained. The thick fiery hair of hers merged with the color of the small lake of blood she laid upon. It was as glorious as the grand flare of an explosion.

On the other side of the communicator, Roy was saying in a raw coarse accent, “I got your location now. I’ll be there in a moment, don’t go anywhere.”

“No, don’t come here,” Jason replied, standing up quickly with his hands drooping down at his sides. “--Ben and the other are still looking for me. Just stay put and secure the ship. I’ll meet you in there once I shake them off.”

“Like hell I’m going to stay put!” Roy returned in a growl, furiously roused by grief and anger. “I’m coming for you. We can take those motherfuckers. The two of us--we can make them pay for they did to Kori!”

“No, Roy, listen to me--”

“ _You_ listen to me,” Roy bit back sharply. “Kori is dead. I’ve already lost her, I’m not going to lose you too--No. I’m coming for you, Jay. Just stay alive and wait for me.”

“Don’t--”

Roy wasn’t listening.

Hand pressing tightly against the communication button, he called out, again and again. To his distress, he was answered by nothing but dead silence.

Knowing that Roy was already gone and headed to his way to find him, Jason dropped his hand in despair. A wild sense of dread stole into him, and at last—for the first time in this morning--his hands began to shake.

“You know he’ll never leave your side. Not like anyone else in your life.” A voice ghosted up from behind him, “--Such loyalty that one has. Such stupidity.”

Jason swiped around immediately, gun pointing ahead at whoever that was talking to him and more than ready to shoot. Then he stiffened.

“You shouldn’t—you shouldn’t be here.”

The wind of the hill stirred her long hair, but not her nature sense of superiority. Talia flickered him a smile. The same smile she used to give him when he was younger. When he was a kid.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” she asked leisurely in reply. “You know I’ll be here. It was my instruction that brought the League of Assassins to you. Nothing they have done to you that wasn’t under my command. We have plan for you, my dear, and you know that only I could lead our plan to success.”

She was right, but it still didn’t make sense.

Talia was gone, that’s why the League of Assassins wanted him. Because she had appointed him to be her heir. He knew that. He could remember that.

Keeping his gun forward, Jason stared at her with an intent glare, not at all sure what the hell he was looking at. “--You disappeared. Right after you killed _your own son_.”

“Yes, Damian,” she replied mildly, “My poor child. How sad that he had chosen the wrong path.”

She didn’t even blink when she said this. It was as though she had no feeling about this.

“You’re not real, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because you don’t feel,” Jason pointed out, “You don’t feel for the kid.”

It might not seemed like it, but Talia al Ghul wasn’t always a monster. She might have the ability to easily turn herself into the cruelest of cruel souls, and she might be as mad as someone who had gone through such great number of baptism in the Lazarus Pit might be, but she was never without passion. In fact, Jason believed that she was only as mad as she was passionate.

The woman might not have the best parenting skills, might not even have the strongest maternal instinct, but she must have had some feelings for Damian, for his death. Even Jason had felt for his death.

Whatever this presence was, it couldn’t be Talia; at least not the real one.

“Of course I’m not,” she replied calmly, naturally, as if she was reading his mind.

The certainty of her fine tone stirred Jason, and all of a sudden, the loose pieces of puzzle in his head were pushed together. He knew why she didn’t feel, why she didn’t have any feelings for Damian--It was because Damian was insignificant at this point. He wasn’t important, not in this. None of this was about Damian or anyone else, it was all about _Jason_.

“I’m not real, or more precisely, not real in a material way.”

Whatever that took the shape of Talia was saying, “And I don’t need to be in a real material form to be with you. No, my dear. I’m with you since long ago. I’m _within_ you, don’t you see? Can’t you sense it?—From the deep of your raging heart? The deep of your tempestuous mind?—Or perhaps, on that little part in your _brain stem_?”

He lifted his hand wildly to reach behind his ear. “--the chip…”

“Is nothing but a stimulation,” she smiled. “I’ve never meant to drive you with the microchip. All this time since you’ve known me, have I ever been one with such short vision? No, I am one of the great al Ghul, and we al Ghul have always seen to the last.”

He shook his head in terror. “What have you done to me…?”

“Nothing you didn’t long for, my dear boy,” she replied. “The ultimate freedom--From your past, your suffering, your unceasing struggles. The same thing you’re looking for when you’re heading to the Chamber of All.”

“I didn’t--” he began to argue, only the words Ducra had once said to him in his dreamt came back to him and he stopped short.

At the manor, while he had been recovering from the recent attack from the Joker, Ducra had found him in his dreamt and revealed a vision upon him. _“--You can not live in the past and the present at once,”_ she had said, _“Not without one reaching out to destroy the other.”_

Jason had tried to resist, but her words had taken hold of him. That’s why he had headed alone to the Himalayas. After everything that had happened with the Joker, with Bruce, he had wanted to removed himself from all of his burden before it could successfully drag him down--But no. No. Whatever he had been seeking for, it wasn’t this.

Whatever Talia had the League of Assassins done to him, it wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want any part of this. He didn’t want—he didn’t want to kill _Kori_.

“Why--why would you…” He stared at Talia in astonishment. “Why would you—you want me to kill them. You _make_ me kill them—Kori and Roy—Why would you… _No._ Oh no. I just…I just killed _Kori_. Why…why would you make me do this?”

She met his wild eyes with a composed expression. “Because you have to,” she said, “You can never achieve the true freedom you’re so desperate for until all of your burden is disposed of, that includes the two of them--You must dispose them in order to be free, to move forward and to advance to your true grand destiny.”

His mouth twitched into a snarl. “Of course,” he returned with a curt, cutting huff of laugher. “Of— _fucking_ —course that’s what you’d think. Given how you’ve created a monster baby to brutally murder your _own_ baby, you must have known all about disposing stuff and moving forward.”

The Talia that was only existed in his head was unmoved by his acid remark. He shook his head with disapproval. “I’m _not_ you, Talia. I’m nothing like you. I don’t need to hurt the people I care in order to move on, and I absolutely don’t give one single fuck about your _destiny_.”

“But you’re wrong.”

Unconcerned by his fury, she replied, “No one has placed my presence inside your mind, Jason. It was you who sought me out. Not just because you know that I’m responsible for what is happening to you, but also because that, in the pitch dark bottom of your heart, you know there’s a great bond between us--Don’t you remember? It was I who found you while you’re lost, while you’re _forgotten_. You couldn’t find more of yourself in anyone else than you could in me. We have so much in common, Jason--Our insatiable lust for vengeance, our vicious passion. Our brokenness and our madness.”

“You’re flattering me if you think I’m even one tenth as mad as you,” he countered gravely. “I may be a bit crazy, but unlike you, I’m not out of _control_.”

“But what about the time when you’ve set out to revenge yourself? What about the time you’ve displaced the crime bosses in Gotham and become their new lord? What about the time when you’ve plotted to destroy my beloved detective, your own mentor?--Plotting cruelly to make him suffer, to make him pay, for hurting you and for disappointing you?--The time when you’ve murdered dozens of criminals in Blackgate—Are you certain you’re in full control of yourself while you’re committing any of those?”

With a thin smile unfolding on her face, she drew to Kory’s side slowly, holding out a hand to attract Jason’s eyes to the fresh corpse on the hill. “Say, my dear--say that you had all the control of yourself when you brought death to this beautiful, magnificent creature.”

He couldn’t…he couldn’t say that.

He couldn’t say that because he didn’t think he had.

Eyes fixated upon Kory, he tried urgently to recalled how it had happen, tried to recall why—why he would have done such thing, what he had been thinking while he had done that.

He couldn’t recall anything. Nothing but the vivid moment when he had killed her. The way he had killed her, quick and silent--Without thinking, without feelings, without hesitation. It was as though he had known that he must. That it was always how it was meant to be.

It was as though he had known all along, that’s how everything would end.

“It is how it’s meant to end, always,” Talia was saying.

Without him noticing, she had moved away from Kori and turned to stand at his side. “--Tragedy after tragedy, death upon death. All those good heroes out there, they try their hardest to pretend otherwise, but there’s no development, no renovation, no salvation in between our irreversible process to obliteration--By the law of this universe, all things must fall into disorder and perish, there’s no escape.”

As Talia leaned in and laid a hand kindly upon his shoulder, Jason didn’t shake her off. He was unable to do anything but just stood along with her and looked at the corpse before them.

“Have you ever told them?” asked Talia in a whisper, “The princess? Your boy? Have you ever told them that all along you’ve known what’s waiting for them at the end? The tragic endings?”

Vacuously, he looked around at her.

“You know it will always end in tragedy,” she said. “After the tragedy that happened to your mother, the tragedy that happened to yourself--After all the variety of harrowing tragedies you’ve witnessed and experienced, you must know. The universe is a cruel place--but you, Jason, you’re not a cruel one. No. No, you’re not. You’re not nearly cruel enough to allow the people you cared so deeply to meet their unavoidable tragedy, to suffer from their inescapable misery.”

Her soft, thick accent clung onto his ear, sweet as the sugar of lead. “By putting down those you love, you wouldn’t only unburden yourself, but most importantly, you’ll be doing them a favor. You have yet the power to change and to control this universe. At the moment, you don’t even have the full control of yourself. But this?—Putting your loved ones out of their misery? This is the _only_ thing you can control. This is how you can save them.”

“But it doesn’t…it doesn’t make sense,” he murmured, in a tone that no longer sounded like himself but a tone of a young lost boy. “What you said--It’s pure madness.”

“It is, indeed,” she replied with a thin approving smile.

 

***

 

As far as he could remember, he was always running, from Dad and his angry fists, from the people from which he had stolen, from the police, from the creditors, from the nightmares, from the laughter and the crowbar.

He used to believe that learning how to fight would mean he could’ve finally stopped running, but here he was--running down the hill in the island, as rapidly as possible, like his life was depended on it.

Talia—or the madness in his broken mind that had taken the form of Talia—wasn’t following him. She didn’t need to.

 _Where do think you could possibly run to?_ Even though she was nowhere to be seen, Jason could still hear her voice.

No, no she didn’t need to follow him. She already _had_ him.

“Jason--!”

A hand caught Jason in the arm, forcing him to halt on the foot of the hill. He swept around abruptly, eyes widened behind the helmet he wore, stunned and dumb.

Roy was standing beside him, heavily armed. “Are you okay?” he asked hectically, grabbing Jason’s arm in one hand while his other hand holding out to touch Jason in his shoulder.

Out of instinct, Jason moved up his own hand in response, only fell to a stop before he could reach Roy.

Digging the heels of his feet on the ground, he inhaled deeply, taking a few seconds to catch his breath before he started, “--The League of Assassins. They were chasing me. But I think…I think I lost them.”

“Good. Good. Okay. You’re alive, that’s good. That’s good.” Roy gave his shoulder a quick squeeze. The edge of anxiousness in his tone abated slightly. “—Now that I’m here, we can take the fight to them. The two of us, we can take them. Come on, let’s move.”

He turned around then, dauntless and vengeful, with every intent to march upon their enemies. Jason remained stationary on the spot, staring at Roy with intense gaze.

Noted he wasn’t moving, Roy glanced back and scowled in bafflement. “Jay?”

“You need to leave,” he said roughly. “Go back to the ship. Go somewhere safe. It’s me they want. It isn’t—it isn’t your fight. You need to leave, Roy. You need to leave before--”

“What are you talking about?” Roy cut him short, turning fully to face him with a vexed expression. “I’m not going to _leave_ you. Not to them. Not ever. I don’t care what those fuckers want, all I know it’s that they hurt you, and they hurt Kori—for fuck’s sake, Jason—They _killed_ Kori--!”

“They didn’t.”

Roy’s gaze at him grew blank with confusion. “What? What are you--”

“They didn’t kill her,” Jason said, holding his voice plain and steady. “I did. I killed Kori. And now I’m gonna kill you too.”

He hoped that Roy would’ve just listened to him and never come to find him. He hoped that he could’ve just left. But he didn’t.

The gun in Jason’s hand moved up to Roy’s face. Since the moment he had pulled it out from his holster and directed it to Kori, he had never lost his grip on this cold piece of metal. All along, he had it attached right to his hand, wielding it as naturally as if it was an extension of himself.

Before Jason and the barrel of his gun, Roy stood rigid in dismay.

“If that’s your idea of a joke…” he began slowly.

“It’s not a joke, Roy. They got to me. The League of Assassins. They broke me.”

“How could the League of Assassins possibly _break_ you?” Roy returned, tone rising up unintentionally into a sharp note of skepticism. “Not even the _death_ could break you.”

“Couldn’t it?” he retorted. Roy shook his head stoutly.

“No it couldn’t. It _didn’t_. You dug your way out of _death_ , Jason. You came back, more than that, you came back with a _fight._ ”

“Maybe so.” He kept his shooting hand steady. “But I’m still going to kill you.”

Roy stared at him, eyes growing red and teary.

Drawing a small take of breath through his teeth, Roy asked in reply, “Then why haven’t you already, Jaybird?”

His mind went blank under the rhetorical question.

“You’ve already killed Kori, right? So go ahead and kill me too. The hell are you waiting for?” Roy was asking, with his lips rose up into a lopsided smirk.

While Jason was stunned by his smile and the twinkle of grief in his reddened eyes, he said, softly and tenderly, “--You can’t do it, can you? No, of course you can’t—You wanna know why?”

He paused for a beat to wet his cracking lips and swallow down the lump in his throat. Then he said, “Because in the deepest of your mad, furious heart, you know that you _need_ me, exactly as much as _I_ need you. You know we belong _together_.”

Jason swallowed with difficulty, standing transfixed with his mouth hung loose and his fingers working repeatedly to flex and unflex around the gun--which he could neither bring himself to drop down nor fire.

Roy held out a hand. “We can fix it, Jay,” he appealed to Jason with the extreme of earnestness. “But you have to come with me first. I can get you to somewhere safe.”

“No you can’t.”

Jason backed away from him.

“No. No, Jason, listen to me--” Roy tried again. He always tried. Always trying and trying his best, even though he had never gotten the outcome he wanted--Even though things would all fall apart eventually, no matter how hard he tried to hold them together.

Poor Roy.

“You can’t get me to anywhere safe, because there’s no safety, Roy. There’s no _escape_.”

 _The irreversible process can not be broken_ —In his head, rose Talia’s voice-- _Everything must fall into chaos_. _There’s no escape._

As he looked at Roy through the mist in his eyes, all of the tactile feelings from last night revived to him. The touch of his mouth. The touch of his skin. All of them, they were just as much as sweet as a fantasy.

“Do you know where we are?” Jason asked. “What they did to me—it’s too much, Roy. Even for me. I wanted to escape it. To get safe. And I found myself with you. Always with you. Guess you do grow on me.”

He let out a bleak, humorous snort of laughter.

“But even so---even so, I couldn’t escape.”

He had tried, but he couldn’t escape this; couldn’t escape the fact that everything would always end in tragedy.

All those he loved would suffer from tragedy, from misery, from death. He understood now. He saw it now.

 _There’s only one way you can truly save them_ —Standing with his gun pointing at Roy, he heard Talia saying— _Fire the gun, my dear, and end the misery. This is the only thing you can control._

“This needs to end now,” he said to Roy, who was gazing at him with eyes full of nothing but tears and anguish.

Talia was right, the misery must be ended and the gun needed to be fire. Except she was also lying, about _what_ was the only one thing he could truly control.

There’s nothing he could control in this mess of a creation, nothing except one.

He turned the gun around to his own head. “I can control this.”

Shouting out a dire cry of agony, Roy rushed upon him as fast as he could. But he could never stop Jason from pulling the trigger.

 

***

 

The image began to fade, and soon, all contents were blotted out.

As the spasms of his eyelids stopped, the bright electronic light that had been buzzing and blinking before him grow dark and silent.

At one side of his bed, stood a vital sign monitor and a cart of medical equipment; at the other side, there was a fine, sophisticated machine, connected to his head by a pair of electrode pads.

The man in white coat came forth and removed the electrode pads from Jason’s temples. “Well, he blew his head off again,” he said, with a mild note of disappointment in his voice. “--But on the plus side, at least he’s only killed me and Mr. Turner this time.”

“This is hopeless,” Shiva began, standing at the foot of the surgical bed with her eyes regarding Jason coldly. “What if we actually implant a chip in his head instead of just pretending that we did.”

“That won’t do,” Benjamin replied, still had complete confidence in the plan even after witnessing the recent failure. “--What we seek is a leader, not a puppet. And besides, no electronic chip can be smart enough to hold him, no one for long. He’s an apprentice of the Bat, an apprentice of Ducra, of us. With the trainings he got, he can easily break his way out of any mind control. As a matter of fact, he can resist for so long is the exact proof of his competency.”

“Or his sheer stubbornness,” Shiva retorted. She was never one for subtle scheme, always prefer clear hit then slow poison. It had been weeks since the process had started, and she still saw no point in this.

She couldn’t see what Talia saw, but Benjamin could. Perhaps not every detail of her plan or her vision, since Talia al Ghul was always a woman of many secrets. But he could see the grand picture. He could see the potential in Jason, which could only be reached at its fullest after he released himself from all of his burden.

As for now, Jason’s mind was infected and deadened by the idea of redemption, thinking that in which he could find true freedom and become the greatest vision of himself.

Only the young man was wrong.

He was only at his greatest when he was at his darkest, his angriest, his maddest. Benjamin knew this because he had seen it. He had seen the man Jason had used to be and he needed that man back, since that man alone was the one that could bring them victory in the upcoming war against the Untitled, not this poor, pitiful version of him that was lying half-awake on the surgical bed, weak and awfully poisoned by his foolish pursuit of a bright future, by vain hope, by the love in his heart that had instilled him with such vain hope.

His love was his fatality. His most deadliest poison. It had been holding him back, but it wouldn’t be for much longer.

No love nor hope should survive the inevitable breakdown; all things must fall into destruction, that’s how this world was shaped. In the darkest nook of Jason’s mind, he had known this all along; he was just reluctant to accept it.

Soon, his love would fall, right along with his last grasp of hope, and it would be Jason himself who brought upon the falling. And once that he did--once that he had seen how meaningless all his love and hope were, once that he had let them all go--he would be resurrected.

Once and again, the young man tried to escape, but there’s no escape. Not from himself, not from his own powerlessness, not from the fact that no matter how much he tried, he could not gain any control upon this world and the ruthless way it worked.

The young man must stop running and turn to face the truth instead. Because only by then, he would find the power he needed to take over and reshape this misery of a world.

Benjamin said to the Doctor, eyes turning yet again to where the mind projector was aiming up at, “Let’s try it again.”

The Doctor moved and began to do some adjustment on the machine.

As the machine ran, the light was back on; an image from the mind projector revealed itself presently in the air.

The Doctor’s face came into the floating image.

 _“It’s not going to hurt, don’t worry.”_ In the picture from Jason’s consciousness, he was holding a scalpel and a piece of electronic microchip in his hands. _“--You won’t even remember it exists.”_

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

After working uninterruptedly for over twenty-four hours, the lack of sleep had begun to take its toll on him. He tried to maintain his focus, but his eyes blurred and he was struck by an abrupt sense of dizziness.

Much to his annoyance, the electronic device he had been working on shifted into a hazy shape of grey. With the throbbing in his temples increased, he couldn’t help but screwed his eyes shut, hung his head forward and put down the tools in his hands onto the worktable.

Few seconds later, he reopened his eyes. His muscles stung as he leaned his head backward and rolled his stiff neck from side to side. He let out a groan at the physical stimulation, peeled off one of his welding gloves and ran a bare hand over his face, which was just as sweaty and filthy as the rest of his body.

He could only recall himself having a shower once, after he had returned from his fruitless quest on the snow-capped Himalayan mountains several days ago—after he had made it through the deadly chill in spite of the limitation of his human body and had successfully found the entrance to the All-Caste's domain, where he had had great hope of finding his missing friend, only had been told by S'aru, the bald-headed guardian genie of the Chamber of All, that all he did was fruitless and that he should give up his vain hope since the one he had been seeking for could no longer be found.

 _“He should’ve gone to us--As the sole carrier of our fallen legacy, his path should’ve leaded him back in here, to assume his duty to the All-Caste and get himself prepared for what comes next.”_ Inside the Chamber of All, S'aru had explained to him and Kori, _“But as you can see, he isn’t here. He was taken away--brought onto a path that he must walk alone. No one can reach him at where he is, not even Ducra’s spirit. He’s on his own now.”_

Naturally, Roy had demanded to know who had taken his friend and the exact location to which the guy was taken.

 _“What do you think you could accomplish if you do find him?”_ S'aru had retorted in turn, eyes regarding Roy sharply as if he could see right through him. _“You think you can help him?—You think by getting back to his side, you will be able to solve all of his problems? All of **your** problems?”_

With a wave of his hand, S'aru had called upon a series of images into Roy’s mind, putting Roy under all the bitter, rotten parts of his life, of himself.

All his pain, his failures, his succession of losses, and his intangible but permanent dread that he would always end up losing everyone and everything no matter how hard he fought to defend them--They had all stormed upon him, doing everything they could to push Roy down to the chasm in his own cracked heart. _“--How can you come to anyone’s help, when it is you who needs help?”_ S'aru had asked rhetorically as Roy had struggled to keep himself on his feet.

 _“That sounds like what my therapist would say,”_ Roy had gritted, not ready to let himself be broken down. Not now. Not again. Not when someone he cared for was in trouble and needed him.

In spite of the doubts and concerns she had expressed earlier about his journey throughout the deadly chill of the Himalayas, Kori had stood right by his side in the Chamber of All, supporting him silently with her hands on his shoulders.

 _“I’ll remember to pay my therapist a visit as soon as I got my boy back,”_ he had said to S'aru, crisply and relentlessly.

S'aru had shaken his head with disapproval. _“There’s nothing you can do for Jason now. Just end your foolish pursuit and go home, before you hurt yourself.”_ He had vanished then, leaving an awoken legion of monsters for Roy and Kori to fight with.

Roy had fought against the monsters while shouting for that bald-headed little douchebag to come back--up until the point where Kori had dragged him far away from the hopeless battle, and he had no choice but to let her, since his human body had reached its limitation already he could no longer maintain his consciousness.

Giving himself a slap in the face to clear away the last bit of his weariness, Roy put his glove back on and resumed to work.

There’s no one here in the workshop. No one but himself and some ancient spirits that had approached him a couple of days ago, right before he had set off to continue his search for Jason.

He adjusted the pair of dirty goggles on his face, leaning forward and regarding the half-finished gadget on the worktable closely. “--Would you mind crank up some music for me? It’s starting to get a little bit too quiet in here,” he said, while tampering with the gadget.

The ancient spirits didn’t answer him, didn’t even bother to show their faces and creep around him while he worked. But there’s no doubt they were here, creeping and waiting, in the immaterial side of the room, a thin veil away from his mortal eyes.

 _“You can’t trust them--”_ Kori’s word returned to him, ringing loudly through the material silence.

Roy didn’t know what exactly these Untitled spirits wanted from the League of Assassins; they had never told him much, besides that it was the League who had taken Jason away, holding him inside the sacred city of 'Eth Alth'eban, and that if Roy wished to save his friend, he must ally with them and help them breach the city.

Kori had tried to talk him out of accepting the deal, afraid that the road these dark old spirits had pointed him to would only lead him to destruction, of himself, or maybe even of something way more bigger than himself.

Only at this moment, he couldn’t care less about himself, and he could hardly care about the world.

There’s something brewing, something big--Like a huge, catastrophic battle that might devastate the entire world. Roy could sense it just as well as Kori could. He just couldn’t bring himself to be concerned by it.

Deep down in his brain, he wondered if by helping the mysterious Untitled with their mysterious cause, he would end up bringing some sort of misfortune to the world. He didn’t want to be the sucker who would brought the world to its misfortune. He wanted to be those good people who could help save the world--But how could he save the world, or even think about the world, if the only thing that mattered right now was to bring someone he cared back to him, all safe and sound?

Besides, there was always some sort of huge, catastrophic battle, between anyone and anything. There’s always some sort of crisis, some sort of misfortune waiting to explode. Roy couldn’t always let himself be worried by that. If he always kept himself worried about whether or not shit would go down, he would probably just wind up seeking refuge in a psychiatric hospital.

Seeing that she was unable to change his mind, Kori had left and turned to seek another way, certain that if she stayed, she would only have to witness the frightful moment of Roy destroying himself, and as strong as she was, she couldn’t bear to witness that.

The sight of Kori turning away from him had certainly craved out a piece of his heart ( _When he had heard that small familiar “crack” inside him, He did anything but to wonder just how many more times he would have to went through this until there was nothing left in him to break_ )—No deadly chill or rabid monsters could be as tormenting as seeing her go, but that was okay.

It was okay, because everything was going to be okay. Soon as he got Jason back, they would go find Kori together, and whatever came next, the three of them could handle it. Roy was certain of that.

As Roy sat assiduously at the worktable, his own unshaven face reflected on the smooth shiny surface of the trunk of metal he was modifying--ashy, grimed and haggard, with a vague but consistence shine in his hallow eyes, blazing sickly like a man who was dedicated to a cause, or just a man who was suffering from a sickness.

Since Roy always preferred to work with some music and the ancient spirits just didn’t bother to turn on some for him, he began to sing quietly, “--Wild horses couldn't drag me away--Wild, wild horses we'll ride them some day…”

 

***

 

The days he had experienced in his state of consciousness didn’t take more than an hour in the physical world. Over and over again, he had lived and died, and come right back into the same old place to go through another rerun of the same old program which always led to the same old result.

It had never lasted over twelve hours a day; given that each time they restarted the program, they must reboot his brain and have his memory temporary removed, and too many reboot in one day might leave his brain some permanent damage.

Jason could’ve been mistaken since he had sort of given up counting after his first week in captivity, but he believed it was when the ten times was over that the Doctor had decided to call it a night.

While he was lying fixed on the surgical bed, the Doctor turned off the machine, then went to get the sedation he always gave Jason in the end of the day.

The syringe needle sunk into his arm and quickly infilled his bloodstream with a pleasant sense of coldness.

Clenched his hands into tight fists, he pushed off the upsurge of drowsiness by focusing on the pain of his nails biting deeply on his palm.

The Doctor put away the empty syringe and began to unstrap him. A surprised yelp escaped the old man’s month as Jason sprung up all of a sudden.

With a frightened look on his face, he stepped back immediately. Jason grabbed him by the collar of his white coat. “Please, Mr. Todd—you need to calm down.”

He held onto the Doctor while pulling himself off the surgical bed. “This will be the _best_ time ever,” he started, voice getting hoarse and rusty after all the waking and dreaming. “—This time I’m gonna kill you _for real_.”

The Doctor struggled wildly to escape. Jason fought hard to retain his hold on the man, fought hard to keep himself steady, only the drug he had been given was powerful and it was dragging him down.

A feeling of faintness seized him. His grip loosened and he fell over to the medical cart nearby, knocking off some of the supplies of the cart as he clung to it to support himself.

Noted that Jason was no longer a threat, the Doctor turned around warily from the exit.

“That was a close one,” he muttered with a note of relief in his voice, eyes regarding Jason calmly while he was sliding down to the floor. “I see you’re getting used to the drug I gave you, I guess I’ll need to increase the dosage tomorrow.”

His eyelids were drooping down. Through his hazy view of vision, he saw the Doctor step out of the room to call in some guards.

“It’s been a long day, Mr. Todd. Let’s get you back to your room so you can take some rest,” before he sunk fully into darkness, he had heard the Doctor saying.

By the time he woke up from his dreamless slumber, it was already the next morning.

He was back in his prison room. As his arms moved, the chains that were binding him to the bed greeted him with the same clinking noises they always greeted him with for the past few weeks.

Given that he had learned it from experience that there’s no way he could break himself out of these chains, he didn’t bother to struggle, just lied still on the bed, waiting idly for some guards in a ninja suit to come in and prepare him for his daily torture.

Minutes later, someone came in. Jason looked up in surprise as the key to his shackles was thrown upon him.

“Get up. We’re going out,” Ben was saying.

This was new. Ben hadn’t been talking to him once since he had been captured. Jason had figured that maybe it was because the man knew he could never talk him into complying and decided that it would be much more easier if they just broke his mind instead.

He sat up slowly, taking a skeptical look at the key, then another look at his captor slash torturer.

“What is it? Are we finally going to change to a different game today?” he began in a rasp. “—It’s about time, man. The old game has just really started to get boring.”

Unimpressed by his attempt at bravado, Ben replied in a plain voice, “We’ve done enough simulation with you already, I think it’s time for us to get real. Just hurry up and come with me. I have much to show you today.”

“And I’ll come with you because--”

“Because wherever we’re going will have a much better scenery than the place you’ve been.” A thin sneer flashed on Ben’s face, all-knowing and had just enough smugness that made Jason want to skin his face off just for smiling like that, if not for anything else.

Ben was saying, “You can quip as much as you like, but you and I both know how much the simulation sickens you and how you’d _die_ for a change of scenery.”

He would happily _kill_ for a change of scenery, to be more exact.

Staring at Ben gravely for a moment, Jason unlocked the locks with the key, freeing his own hands from the shackles and then got off of bed.

Ben held out a hand. “The key please.”

“What?” Jason retorted with a sarcastic note in his voice, “You’re afraid I’m gonna stab your eyes with them?”

“I have no doubt you’ll try to stab my eyes with them,” Ben replied, staring at Jason steadily until he pulled the key out of his pant pocket and returned it.

Ben moved to the iron door then, leading Jason out of his prison room. There were two guards outside, and several more throughout the corridor, all suited up in their ninja suit with their faces shrouded behind the thick dark cloth. As Jason walked by, they didn’t do as much as shed him a look, just stood lifelessly under the dim light of the castle, like a bunch of sleeping corpses.

“So that’s what it is? A VR simulation?” Jason asked causally while walking with Ben down the corridor. “Do you guys really think that hacking my head and tricking me into murdering my friends in a VR game is going to make me want to hang out with you?”

“We've never tricked you into doing anything,” Ben replied, taking a turn at the corner and then stepped up the stairs.

Noticing the contemptuous sneer on Jason’s lips, he explained with patience, “What you’ve experienced is far more than just an application of virtual reality—The machine we use cannot build world. It cannot hack your mind and alter your thoughts and feelings. All it does is tap in to your perception, craft a duplicate of reality out of it while presenting you with a precondition. We set up a prelude--A starting point, Jason, not the path, and especially not the end. Where you went from there, you went all by yourself.”

A glow flamed up inside him despite his attempt to keep a cool head. Jason returned, voice hardened with uprising anger, “So you’re telling me that what happened in the simulation, it was all me--That it was me who decided to go mad and kill the people I care?”

Ben paused on the staircase and turned to give him an ironic glance. “Don’t you find it odd? That all these times you’re in the simulation, not once have you come to see its falsehood before it’s too late? That’s because it wasn’t falsified, Jason. It was as factual as your own fear, your own vulnerability and your own…desire.”

He said while continued to lead Jason up the long marble stairs, “We only got to you in the simulation because you think we could. Because you think it is true, that one day you will be seized by things you cannot outrun—things you cannot _control_ \--and that your mind would become so perfectly broken, you’ll just end up destroying everything you’ve ever loved.”

Presently, they reached the top landing and entered a short narrow passage. A shred of sunlight shone through the gateway across the one-way path.

Pausing in the shadowy spot at the landing where the sunlight couldn’t reach, Jason retorted, eyes fixed upon Ben’s back, “That’s what you’re trying to show me? That my head is fucked-up?”

Unconcerned by the blatant spite in his tone, Ben went past the passage and stepped up into the bright light. “This—is what I’m trying to show you,” he said, as Jason followed him up slowly to the battlement of the castle. One of his broad hands held out pointedly to reveal a great cityscape below them. “The utopia that Ra’s al Ghul had been trying to bring to the rest of the world.”

“And?”

“And now it can be yours,” Ben said. “The Untitled is coming, Jason. They have been looking for a way to breach this city, and once they broke in, they will see to destroy everything. Talia trusted that you’re the only one who can stop them. And I trust that it is true. So you must stop running, Jason. You must step up, become our new leader and help us protect our homeland.”

He turned his eyes around from the city to Ben.

“As much as I hate the Untitled, I don’t wanna get involve with your beef,” Jason replied in an impassive voice. “And just like I’ve told you before you kidnapped me, I have no interest being your leader, or being any part of the League. Whatever life I used to have with you guys, it’s over. I’ve moved on.”

“To where?” Ben snorted. “--To become a different person? A hero, just like the man who adopted you? Who failed you?”

Jason glared at him.

 _Where do you think you could possibly run to_ —The question reappeared in his ears. Somehow, the wraith from the ghost land managed to chase him down to the reality. He clenched his hands into fists and stamped it away promptly.

All the while, Ben was saying, “You try and tell yourself you can play the role, but you _know_ it is never your role to play—Can’t you see what is happening? All this time you’re trying to mow down who you are and become a different person, you’ve ended up crippling yourself. It was your disability that gave way to the machine, that allowed it to prey on your weakness and torment you with it.”

“You’re the one who’s trying to _torment_ me,” Jason growled. The wrath he had tried to keep in broke out of its frail cage, evoking tempest. “You’re the one who used that damn thing to trap me into that nightmare and tricked me into thinking I was broken. But you can’t break me.”

 _We don’t have to, my dear_ \--Talia was saying, much to his frustration.

Her voice resounded clearly, not from the back of his head but somewhere dangerously close— _You've already fallen apart, all by yourself. And there’s no shame about falling apart, after all, **everything falls**. _

Even without a chip in his head, he could still hear her cursed voice. But he’s not going to listen to her. No, not in here. Not in the real world. She couldn’t get to him in here. Not even the death could get to him. Neither could the Joker nor anything else in his past.

Ben opened his mouth to reply, but immediately stopped himself as he heard a series of explosions rumbling through the city.

Though the sudden outburst surprised Jason as much as it did Ben, he pushed past the shock of it and leaped to the opportunity it presented.

Drawing out the small scalpel blade he had nicked from the medical cart last night, he came up at Ben while the man was stretching his head out of the crenel to see what was happening.

With his attention being drawn to the confusion down there, Ben could barely react when the blade moved deftly on his neck. He held up a hand instantly to stop the blood from spurting out of the fatal cut.

The man put up some fruitless struggles, which only resulted in speeding up his blood lost. As Ben began to falter, Jason gave him the last push to sent him to the ground.

Tossed the blade away, he wiped his bloody hand on his clothes and turned to take a look outside.

The city gate was sparkled up by flashes of lightening. He squinted his eyes and found a familiar red ray dashing around in the distance, burning as bright as the sun itself.

His friends had come for him, and now they were in a battle. Soon as Jason had noted that, he picked up Ben’s abandon sword and speeded out of the castle.

He ran as fast as he could, anxious to get to his friends, to join the fight with them.

Threaded through the panicking crowd on the streets, he found the battlefield spreading out right in front of him. Just right there--He could see Kori now. He could see _Roy._ He could get to them, and then they could fight this fight together and make an _escape--_

 _But how? There’s no way out of this._ A voice plunged into his mind, not suave and sweet-sounding like Talia’s. But a male one, low and vibrant, much like his own _._

A fume of trepidation snuck upon him, seeping deep into his structure.

Before his eyes, Kori was getting overwhelmed by the Man-Bat Commandos in the sky. A sharp claw slashed her back. Her light dimmed and her face distorted in pain. She tried to hold herself steady, but another merciless claw came at her.

“No…”

Jason froze up, eyes fixated on Kory as she dropped from the sky. A cloud of dust rolled up when she crashed against the solid ground. “—No. No no no…” Reflectively, he took a step forward, attempting to get to Kori and help her. Only he knew he couldn’t help her. There’s nothing he could do for her now. The death had got her. The death always got what it wanted.

Weather it was in here or upon the hill of the paradise island, she died, there’s no way he could change this. Jason stared at her in a stupor, before a wild sense of dread awoke him and he turned around abruptly to find Roy at the other side of the battlefield.

His eyes received the image of Roy, just as the moment Lady Shiva ran her cold sword right through his chest. “ _No,_ ” Jason croaked. “No, no, this can’t be happening...”

Roy stood frozen, with his eyes strained and tainted with the shock of pain. Shiva drew her sword out of his body. He stumbled then, a few steps forward before he fell down completely.

Jason didn’t run to him. There’s no point in running, not anymore. Not when all roads were thoroughly programmed and would lead only to tragedy.

With the picture before him eating away his last shred of strength, his knees began to buckle.

Stricken by a sense of desolation, he knelt on the ground, eyes gazing out at Roy who was lying right in front of him, yet so far out of his reach.

“It can’t be real,” he said, turning his head sideways to find Talia.

“It’s not, but it is the truth,” the spectre of Talia answered him. All along, she stuck by his side, watching over him closely like she was his own guardian angel; an unholy one that bestowed not grace but the opposite. “They’re always going to fall, as well as the world. Always going to suffer, to die.”

Her eyes moved around from Jason to Roy, regarding the lifeless body musingly.

“How curious,” she said, an amused smile floated up on her lips. “For hundreds of times in the past few weeks, you had made all the effort to salvage him, and it was this one time when we gave you the liberty and left you be that you destroyed them both.”

He glowered at her. “I didn’t make this happen.”

“Yet, in your sick, miserable world, it happened.” She returned him a pitiful look. “--Haven’t you listened to anything Benjamin said? All of this was crafted out of your own perception, your own mind. What happens in this world is your own creation, including the deaths.

“He’s lying.”

“Is he?”

“Yes. Yes he is,” he gritted, hand tightening around the sword at his side. “He lied about the chip, he lied about brainwashing me—All he’s been doing is lying--all you’ve been doing—all of this—is just _lies._ ”

Talia didn’t even bother to respond, just looked at him with that pitiful look on her face. And it stung deeper in him than any argument she could’ve made, because deep down, he knew it was true—that there’s truth lying under this perverse fabrications he was stuck in.

The League of Assassins might have invented the whole story about the chip as a way to get to him, they might’ve implanted the seed of doubt, but it was in Jason’s world that it found the perfect growing environment.

His eyes drifted involuntarily to Roy, staring madly at the harrowing picture that was somehow his own creation.

All the effort he had made to hold onto this one thing—just this one last thing—And it was all for nothing. As it turned out, he had never needed a bullet to bring destruction upon him, all he needed to do was making him a part of his world, and the world would take care the rest.

For some times, he had managed to convince himself that he could start anew, that he could repair all that was broken. Only what was broken was far beyond repair, while all that was left unbroken would also break at some point.

In his world, there would always be destruction, always be losses. It was pretty much written.

“How many more times do you need to run into the dead end again until you spare yourself all this grief and heartache?” Talia asked him. “Aren’t you tired? Aren’t you getting sick of running again and again in a dead circle?”

He was. He was very much tired, and sick.

Jason closed his eyes briefly to shut out the display of loss.

The fact that what happened in here was only artificial didn’t stop him from feeling the stabs. It didn’t stop him from having his stomach turned and his entrails boiled. It didn’t stop him from dying a little inside.

The event might be fake, but the experience wasn’t. And now that he had faced it, now that he had perceived it, it would always be with him. He might not be able to remember it once the Doctor rebooted his brain and began the next round, but deep down, he would know its ghastly visage, right among all the other gruesome features of tragedy that were seared deep inside him, reminding him at all times that there’s no win in his world, that there’s no getting away.

None of this would stop until he threw in the towel. He wondered what would come next, if the League would switch back to the original script, or if they would stick with this one and just leave him wonder over and over again just how screwed up his head must have been, that it wouldn’t even acknowledge goodness without seeing to its ruin.

The simulation remained running all the while.

Soon as the invaders had been dealt with, the Man-Bat Commandos were called off. With her blood-stained sword drooping at the side of her body, Lady Shiva exchanged some words with her colleagues, then she faced around and spotted Jason.

“If you’re here to find your friends, you’re too late. They’re dead,” she enunciated, as if what he saw wasn’t clear enough. “How stupid of them to ever step foot in this place.”

“Yeah, it is pretty stupid,” Jason agreed, in a dry inward voice

Shiva regarded him thoughtfully. “You don’t need to go back to your cell.”

“But I’m already stuck in it.”

Giving one last look at the corpse of Kory, and the corpse of Roy, he then lifted up the sword in his hand.

He might not be able to win this, but never _ever_ would he threw in the towel and allowed them the satisfaction of winning.

“See you right back on the flip side, you fuck,” Jason said, mouth breaking into a sneer that was made fully of spite.

The blade cut through his throat in a clean slide. His vision blurred and the world around him began to collapse.

In a moment, all things were gone.

Then he woke up.

 

***

 

He stretched his eyes open, momentarily disoriented.

The artificial world that the machine had built upon Jason’s mind was shockingly realistic. With the ghostly touch of death lingering upon him, Benjamin held up a hand and pressed against his own neck, on which he could still feel the bite of fatality.

“My apology, Mr. Turner, this is all my fault,” the Doctor began in a flurry, moving forward to prick the electrode pads off Benjamin’s tempers. “—I shouldn’t have started it up in the operating room. I had no idea he’d manage to get hold of a weapon.”

Benjamin dismissed him silently with a wave of the hand. The Doctor wasn’t to blame for his illusionary demise. It was all on Benjamin himself, since he was the one who had decided to approach Jason in the virtual reality and issue a conversation with him.

After all he had gone through these past few weeks, Benjamin had thought that the young man would be ready to give in, leave behind all of his hang-ups and join their side. He should’ve known that Jason would not give in without a fight, regardless of how much pain he had suffered. Giving in was never in his nature, his nature was to battle, which was exactly why Benjamin valued him so.

He should’ve known Jason would take any opportunity to strike him in his realm of consciousness. It was Ben’s own error that he had gotten distracted and given the young man a chance.

With his senses recovered fully from the instant shock of being murdered, Benjamin got out of the surgical bed beside Jason’s, and immediately came to notice the small quack beneath his feet.

Surprisingly, the outburst that had occurred in the virtual reality didn’t seem to be just a fragment of Jason’s imagination. There’s a series of booming from the city gates, drumming all the way to the castle and stirring its ground. The young man must have sensed the activity, thus a reproduction had been employed in his mind.

The alarm sounded off presently. A swarm of holographic alert boxes popped up, burning the room with their red glow.

The door of the operating room swung open, just before Benjamin was about to head out and attend the trouble. His colleagues strode in and gathered up around him, all taut with anticipation for combat.

“What happened?” Benjamin demanded.

“We’re under attack,” responded Shiva curtly, while Rictus switched up the holographic display. The imagery from the surveillance at the city gates unfolded in the air, boarding over the alert boxes and the display panel on which projected the presentation of the virtual reality program that the machine, and Jason, had yet finished producing.

Inside the live feed footage, Benjamin saw that the sacred gates were shattered. The Man-Bat Commandos who had been sent out to defend the city were driven back by a succession of heavy bombing. The view of the battleground was mucked up by flashes of plasma weapon and flares of explosion. In a moment, the dazzle of light died away. A shape of red stood out in the smoke of war.

“It’s the Arsenal kid,” Shiva said. “The Tamarian doesn’t seem to be around, but I think he brought companies.”

Benjamin grunted in agreement. Though the surveillance feed showed no sight of the Untitled, there’s no doubt they were near, lurking behind this raid they had deployed and waiting to strike as soon as the protection seal around the city was broken. For thousands of years, these immortal beings of evil had been working to eliminate their eternal enemy, the All-Caste; now that they had succeeded, there’s only one thing left that could get between them and their pursuance of conquests.

Talia had warned him long ago that the Untitled would come for the sacred fountain in the heart of the city, since it was the only one thing in this world that could strip away their power; and once that they came, the city would be laid in ruins, followed soon by the rest of the world.

The Untitled must be destroyed, but only by a certain hand. Talia had told him some time ago that these immortal beings could only be rivaled by the All-Caste’s powerful magic, which was something Talia herself had been denied of. It would seem that, in spite of their long-term alliance, Ducra had never fully trusted her and deemed the daughter of the Demon’s Head worthy of being the inheritor of their arcane power. Her hope lied not in Talia but in the young boy she had brought to her doorstep some time ago. Once that Ducra and her clan had fallen, it would be Jason alone she entrusted with the essence of their great power and the duty of defeating the Untitled. She had trust in Jason’s success, and so had Talia.

 _“—However, the Untitled may not be the only threat Jason will face against,”_ Talia had said, voice dropping down into a somber note. “ _There’s someone else working behind the scene, a foe who has been planning to profit from this fated battle between the Untitled and the champion of the All-Caste since long ago. If Jason was to destroy this foe and achieve true leadership of the League of Assassins and this city in my absence, he must be at his full strength, and must not let himself be held back by any weaknesses.”_

When Benjamin had asked for more information about this mysterious foe, Talia didn’t answer. Instead, she had turned to present Benjamin with the machine she had brought into the castle that day, and informed him if Jason had ever showed any hesitation or any sign of weakness when they needed him, this fine piece of technology she had discovered might just be the thing that could help clearing his head.

Since the production was built upon Jason’s mind and not Benjamin’s, his departure from the virtual reality did not deter the machine from running its course. While Jason lay restricted on the surgical bed with his mind continued journeying inside the artificial world, Benjamin stared at the surveillance feed grimly, brows wrinkled in irritation as he watched the Man-Bat Commandos fail in repelling the one man army that was Jason’s companion—His harbor, his weak spot.

He should have known that the Untitled would turn to Arsenal for assistance. After having to watch that same old underdeveloped program repeatedly, Benjamin felt like he had come to know the redhead a lot more than he would ever care to; and if he was in truth what Jason’s mind believed him to be, then certainly, he would came, all brash and reckless and ardent-minded, fighting to retrieve what he had lost, and ignorance of the fact that he was fighting to lose.

There’s none other than him--one who was so deeply connected with Jason, one who was so desperate, so gullible, with such vain conviction and senseless courage to march upon certain death for his loved ones—that could make an even more perfect target for the Untitled to prey on and manipulate.

If what the young man was committing wasn’t just an act of complete stupidity, Benjamin might have even given him credit for his loyalty and the nerve he showed to go onto this suicide mission by himself.

“Go take down that fool before he destroys everything,” he said to Graystone, who immediately made his way to the battlefield. Cheshire volunteered to go too, looking properly excited at having a chance to claw open their red-haired intruder.

With two of his colleagues exited the room, Benjamin drew the display of the surveillance feed aside, bringing up the projection panel to the forefront, only in time to see that the virtual reality program was terminated.

Given that the Doctor had nothing to do with the termination, Benjamin supposed that it must be Jason’s own doing.

Whatever that had gone down in Jason’s mind had gone down rather quickly. He wondered what it meant, then shortly decided that it didn’t matter.

The Untitled had made their move; whether Jason was already or not, he needed to be around to make sure their plan of attack didn’t succeed.

Once the machine had ceased running, the young man began to stir and drifted slowly out of the paradoxical sleep. “--Unstrap him, and give him something to shake him up,” Benjamin said to the Doctor, “It’s time he gets out of bed.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Turner?” the Doctor frowned concernedly.

Seeing Benjamin lift his chin in affirmation, he moved to the medical cart then.

Shortly after the syringe needle had bit Jason on his now unrestricted arm, a gasp escaped his mouth. The Doctor stepped back immediately as he propped up in bed with his eyes strained in a frenzy of confusion.

“Welcome back.” His crazed blue eyes shot up rapidly at Benjamin’s way. “—The Untitled are here. I hope you’re ready.”

 

***

 

The second Graystone was out of the picture, someone else showed up and carried on the attack. A flash of green darted out from the teleportation portal with the swiftness of a lethal, flesh-feasting feline.

Her voice tickled his ear. “--Don’t you look trashy for a prince.” Roy drew away from the woman as soon as he had sensed her looming presence at his side. Her hands grasped at him, one at his head and one at his lower abdomen. Roy grunted in frustration as the trucker hat he wore and the shield generator on his utility belt were both stolen away.

The anti-shock barrier around him lost its glow and vanished. With Roy’s hat on her head, the woman in green leaped away from his side and turned to stand across him. The device that had been protecting Roy from all the air attacks was crushed in her hand. She released her fist and let the shreds fall.

“It’s one thing that you break my stuff and call me trash, but stealing my hat?—Now you’re just being a pain.”

“I try,” replied Cheshire coyly.

While Cheshire and Roy were doing the deadly dance, the troops up there continued laying down artillery fire from the battlement at every chance they got. Now without the anti-shock shield to protect him from being blasted into bits, Roy was forced to stay at close combat with Cheshire, in a way to prevent the troops from firing.

It put him at a major disadvantage, since the woman he was fighting was one of the best assassins in the world who was a master of hand-to-hand combat, while he, on the other hand, required more space to fulfill himself.

Presently, her nails scratched Roy on the arm and sent him into a whirl. A whiff of grunt escaped his mouth as a terrible pain craved through his body. He bit down the pain, trying to keep himself steady. But the ground beneath him flipped over and suddenly, he found himself dropping down on his knees.

The impact of his knees hitting the ground sparked up a great combustion of pain inside him. His head lolled downward, his elbows bent and struggled to prop themselves against the hard ground.

“Easy,” Cheshire squatted down beside him. “The more you try to move, the worse you’ll feel.” The poison she had injected him with her nails had enhanced his sense of pain and made his perception go haywire. He couldn’t breathe without feeling like he was being electrocuted.

Her hand reached out to him. Roy swung his arm blindly to brush her away, and almost chocked by just how much the motion hurt.

She sighed. “I like you, Red. That’s why I only give you this instead of killing you. But if you don’t stay still for the next couple of hours, you may kill yourself.”

Her voice was gentle, and oddly sincere. It almost sounded like she had a heart and her heart was feeling sorry for him. Once again, she held out a hand to Roy. He didn’t make a move to stop her this time. “Just give up, and I may even give you a lift home,” she said, laying a light touch upon Roy’s face that only hurt like a nail thrusting into his skin. “Why did you even come here anyway? You can’t really believe you could win this.”

“But I can’t lose this. It’s too important.” His voice rose painfully from the deep of his throat. He looked up into Cheshire’s eyes. “Besides, haven’t you heard the old saying, pretty cat?—Home is only where the heart is. So how about I give you a lift instead?”

His hand moved and grasped her. A sputter of sparks shot up as Roy sent an electric shock to the teleportation device that was implanted in her wrist.

The woman’s face contorted with confusion; before she could fully understand what he had done, the teleportation portal opened up and adsorbed her in a snap.

Soon as Cheshire was sent away by her own teleportation device, Roy reached for the small tube of antidote he kept on him in case of emergency.

While the pain in his body was slowly abating, he pulled himself up, shouting out a “fire in the hole” and directing his plasma cannon towards the battlement above.

The troops up there were too busy feeing from the crumpling building to attack him. Regardless of the howling of pain his body was making, he stepped forward. The fountain that was producing protection shields around this city was right there in the city centre, just like the ancient spirits had said it would be.

Just when Roy was about to carry out the plan and destroy the sacred fountain like the Untitled had prompted him to, a haze of trepidation dropped upon him.

 _Think about what you’re doing--_ A voice woke up from the chaotic sludge in his sleep-deprived brain, sounding stern and astute and weirdly like Oliver’s voice-- _Think about the consequences, think about what kind of evilness you may be unleashing into the world if you go through this._

The last sober section of his brain was urging him to think. But he couldn’t think now, couldn’t think about whether or not he was acting crazy and that he was in way over his head. If he thought about that, he might have just wanted to stop and abort the mission. He couldn’t stop. He must _not_ stop. He needed to go through this, wherever this might lead him. It was the only way he could get to _Jason._

Snuffed out the doubts in his head, Roy treaded forward until the fountain was within range, then he directed his weapon at it.

Someone called out from a distance before he could fire. “Stop. You’ve gone far enough.” Roy swept his head around to the all-too-familiar voice.

The one he had been to hell and back looking for was moving across the open space in the city centre.

Seeing Jason coming towards his way, a billow of relief rocked Roy with an intensity so great that he almost faltered.

“There you are,” he said, voice thick with an intense sense of exultation.

 

***

 

An upsurge of adrenaline rush roused him up from his trance. He gasped and sprung up in the surgical bed, heart pounding energetically against his ribs. His senses were astonishingly sharp, strengthened, awakened. Briefly, he felt disoriented and had little idea of where he was, then Ben’s voice spoke up and fetched his attention.

“Welcome back,” Ben was saying. “The Untitled is here. I hope you’re ready.”

His gaze fixed intently at the humanoid tiger while he arranged the loose fragments of his memories in due order. Where he was, why he was here, how long he had been in here, and most especially, what he had gone through just a moment ago—they all came back to him presently.

“Two new scripts in a row? You guys must be feeling real creative today,” Jason retorted in a cold tone of irony, half-expecting this to be just another play.

“It’s not a performance,” Ben curtly replied. “You’re in the reality now, and the Untitled is right outside our door.”

With suspicion, his eyes traveled from Ben to the other League members by his sides. There’s something about the way they looked, the way they motioned—the way everything around him was constructed--that registered trueness. It felt like it was real, that he had been released from the machine at last; but the stages that the machine set up had always felt incredibly real, before they had come apart beneath his feet and shaken him up.

He wondered whether or not he should trust that this really wasn’t another program, then quickly decided that it didn’t matter. Whether this was all just a setting or the real world, he had already become a part of this. He had no choice but to see it through ( _He never had many choices. Never many chances either. Never had many things, in fact. There's no_ _one single thing he had got that wouldn’t be taken away eventually. The world took and it took and it took. It consumed everything— **destroyed** everything—including itself)._

Jason began slowly, voice coarse but even, “Assuming this isn’t one of your tricks, after all you did to me, you really think I’ll ever stand by your side and help you in your fight?”

“You will if you know what’s best,” Ben responded. “The world outside, it is dying, Jason—I was trying to tell you this before you rudely cut me off in the simulation. ”

“And your point?” he returned coldly. The revelation of Ben’s earlier participation in the virtual reality cast a chilling disturbance in his stomach. He tried not to think about whether or not it was true, that his talk with Ben earlier wasn’t just a part of the program, that what Ben had said was true and that there was truth beneath that imaginary wasteland.

“Many people have tried to save this world,” Ben told him, “People like the ones from the Justice League--They fight for it, battling persistently against many things, all in an attempt to delay the end of days. And that’s all they’ve ever achieved--A repetition of delays. A reprieve, that’s what they’ve managed to provide, not a solution. The world is broken and it must fall. And when it does, this city alone will stand. It can become the final sanctuary for the rest of humanity. It can be the restart of all things—if only you’d help protecting it from this current threat.”

A sneer etched onto Jason’s face. He retorted mockingly, “If the world’s gonna fall, what makes you think this city is so special it can survive.”

“Because this city will be led by the best of men,” Ben replied, “--who, unlike the people outside, isn’t crippled by any fatuous rule, who has the will to do whatever it takes and the power to do it.”

“And you think that’s me.”

Instead of giving Jason a direct response, Ben turned to regard him for a moment. Then he started, slowly and clearly, “I know your struggles, Jason. I’ve _seen_ your struggles. How you’ve been plagued by your own fears, your own lack of control in this world, your own powerlessness, I’ve seen it all, and I know you can only end your suffering by gaining _strength_ —So here are your choices, you can either side with us now and become the strength of both this city and the League, and have the city and the League become your strength in return; or you can turn away from us, go back smothering yourself under the delusion that you can be anything but who you are.”

Upon Ben’s face, he found no sense of guilt, no sense of shame, no nothing that could indicate the man had considered what he had done to Jason as anything but a favor to him.

All the people in his life, they always acted as though they had any idea of who he was or what was best for him, all had thrust their own opinions on him at some point. Ben and Talia, Bruce and Ducra, they all told him different things--one said “don’t you dare” while the other said “go ahead”; one said “let go of this” and the other said, “No, let go of _that_ ”—And only just now did Jason come to realize how little freedom he truly had.

It felt like that even though he was free from the virtual world, he was still pretty much trapped--Stuck painfully between the mess of conflicts, between all the contending expectations that had been continuously forced upon him; just like how he was stuck in his past, in his suffering, his misery, his destined road to destruction ( _There’s nothing ahead but destruction. Nothing ahead but misery, but tears, but death_ ).

“What happens if I do turn away and leave you all burn in hell,” Jason asked in reply.

Ben swayed out a hand and answered crisply, pulling up the surveillance feed for Jason to see, “Either the world will fall sooner than any of us would want it to, or we kill your companion so the world won’t fall until another day. Or perhaps both.”

The picture of the redhead fighting alone in the surveillance footage took Jason aback, but only for a brief second.

There’s no surprise about the fact that the guy had showed up, marched into one of the deadliest places on earth in an obvious attempt to rescue him. He knew he was going to show up sooner or later. He always knew he would show up. Always knew what a complete idiot he was ( _How completely idiotic he had got to be,_ Jason couldn’t help but asked himself, _that after all he had experienced in his wretched life, he would still allow himself to clung so hard, so insistently, onto something that he should’ve known he was meant to lose right from the very beginning?_ )

As he looked at the obscure form of Roy in the monitor panel, the scene from his latest torture flashed vividly before him. Though he could recall the picture clearly, he could no longer feel the stabs, no longer feeling like there’s a sword going through his own chest.

It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t been feeling anything in particular ever since he had woken up. He wasn’t even feeling as riled as he should be by the League’s presences or anything Ben had told him so far. Nothing rose from the vacuum in his heart that was past the point of annoyance.

While Jason was wondering if it meant that the machine had truly cracked him and that his heart had already died in the virtual reality moment ago, Ben continued, “—No matter what the results is, there’ll be death today, that much is for certain.”

 

***

 

The exultation of seeing the guy was blown away instantly by an abrupt drift of wonderment. Roy regarded Jason warily, feeling quite certain he had misheard him. Given the fact that he hadn’t slept in three days, he thought it was rather reasonable if his hearing had gone malfunctioned.

Roy corrected him lightly, “I believe what you mean is ‘Looking sharp, Roy, it’s good to see you. Now lets get the hell out of here’.”

“No, I mean I’m staying, and you need to leave me alone and go home,” Jason restated his previous statement, which didn’t make any more sense than he had said it the first time.

Bemused, Roy moved the aim of his weapon away from the sacred fountain.

“May I ask why?” he asked while stepping forward to Jason. The guy was standing across him with all the remaining members of the League of Assassins by his sides, looking surprisingly sharp and healthy and not quite seemed like a man who was currently under stress.

He had assumed he might have found Jason in a critical condition; but in fact, the guy didn’t even look nearly as tired and as battled as Roy looked like right now. While he was glad that Jason didn’t appear to be injured, he couldn’t help but wonder what exactly the League had done to him instead if they didn’t torture him physically.

His leery eyes fixed on Jason, searching for the subtle message that he was sure the guy was sending out in body language. The secret communication code they had built up from all this time they had known each other, that would tell Roy exactly where he needed him and what he needed him for.

A chill of perturbation settled in his stomach as he found nothing. Roy stayed on his course to Jason regardless, keeping his approach casual so it wouldn’t raise anyone’s alarm.

Seeing that there’s three of them and only one of him, none of the assassins around Jason seemed to be especially concerned and tried to stop him from stepping closer; they all just stood aloof and watched him, with the perfect confidence that they could take him down in a wink if he tried to start any more fight.

In the meantime, Jason was answering, “The League has asked me to stay and become their new leader. And they’re very persuasive.”

“I bet they are,” replied Roy agreeably, pulling out the EMP jammer with his spare hand the instant he had come face to face with the guy.

There’s no way Jason would have said what he had said unless he was forced to, and given that no one was holding a knife on his neck, the threat Jason was currently under must have from within.

Faster than anyone could react, Roy aimed the jammer at Jason directly and enabled it, trusting that whatever electronic device (a micro bomb, perhaps) that was keeping Jason at bay would be put out by the high peak pulse, and that once the man was free, he would jump right into action.

Only Jason didn’t take action. Instead, he looked at Roy impassively. “I’m not under any control or threat.”

“Yeah, pardon me if I found it hard to believe.”

Seeing that the League of Assassins was utterly unconcerned by his action, he guessed it was true, that they didn’t implant any electronic device in Jason. Roy gave it a two more tries anyway, then put away the EMP jammer when nothing happened.

“I don’t need you in here, Roy,” Jason was telling him. “I’ve already made my decision. Just go home before you kill yourself.”

“So the League of Assassins is even more resourceful than I thought,” Roy shook his head and muttered, with an edge of lurking anger in his voice. “I never would’ve thought they’d be able to brainwash a Batboy like you, but man, these bastards are good.”

“I’m not brainwashed,” Jason corrected him. “In fact, my head hasn’t been this clear in a long time.”

“Said literally every single person who is brainwashed,” Roy returned swiftly, then took a long, thoughtful look at Jason, whose eyes was clear without a trace of emotions.

Although the guy wore no wound on his skin, Roy could still see how badly he had been tormented.

People like Jason were pretty much inured to physical pain, so whatever the League had done to him must have gone beyond that. There’s no way those sons of bitches would’ve gotten into Jason’s head like this without putting him through hell.

Roy clutched his spare hand into a fist and cooled down his flooding anger. As much as the thought of what the League of Assassins had done to Jason made his blood boil and he would like to have revenge on that, he needed to stay calm. He wasn’t here for revenge. Revenge wasn’t what important right now. What important right now was to get Jason to safety.

“I don’t know what they did to you, but no worries, Jaybird.” He flashed Jason a smile, before redirecting his weapon to the sacred fountain. “--Once we get home, we’ll patch you up in no time.”

Jason responded his words with still silence.

Before Roy could successfully fire, Lady Shiva surged up, trapping him in the fatal flashes of blade.

He had never imagined he could’ve taken down the entire League of Assassins and their Man-Bat army in their own stronghold. Even with Kori by his side, the chance of winning against all the enemies and getting out of this city alive was slim; and right now, with Kori being absent and Jason clearly being under control and showing no intent to lend him a hand, Roy couldn’t be more alone in this fight.

By breaking in to this fortified city and getting through two of the League members, he had already exceeded the fullest of his limit. At the moment, he was running on nothing but sheer will. His head was faint with exhaustion, and he found himself getting harder and harder to breathe as his fight against Shiva progressed.

It didn’t take more than a minute before he ran out of breath. Shiva’s sword slashed across his armor suit and marked him. A hot streak of pain trekked through Roy’s back. He let out a muffled grunt, faltered a few steps forward and then whipped out an arm at the woman.

Shiva parried his swing agilely and gave him a kick in return. Roy fell down hard at the foot of the fountain base, one hand holding on the stone margin above him while the other one clutching tightly at the side of his waist.

Jason’s voice spoke clearly from somewhere distance, “Just give up, Roy. It’s over.”

“No it’s not.” His response though sounded feeble and slurry, was no less determined. “--Not until I get you home.”

Seeing that the only chance he could escape this deathtrap with Jason was to occupy the League of Assassins with a greater enemy, he followed the plan.

All the electronic equipment Roy brought with him momentarily went down as he distributed a requisite amount of high voltage power from the energy storage unit into one single arrow.

The fact that Roy had been angling towards the fountain all along and that she had been played dawned on Shiva once she had seen him move. With her eyes ablaze with anger, she dashed up in a flash. She might be fast, but he didn’t get his old moniker because he was slow on the drew either.

Shiva couldn’t stop him. Nothing could stop him. He must get Jason back. He wouldn’t let anyone take away someone he loved ( _No. Not again_ )--Never.

Out of nowhere, a ray of red emerged in the sky. Kori had come, and she had brought along Essence, the last daughter of the All-Caste, who was also Jason’s ex-girlfriend.

The two of them were here to stop Roy before it was too late.

Kori dived down from the sky and cried out urgently, “Roy, no--!”

It was too late.

In a blinding blast of energy, the fountain crumpled.

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

For a moment, everyone in the city center was stunned and frozen up on the spot except from Roy, who had begun to scramble away from the brim of the fountain as soon as the exploder had been activated and started to beep.

Exactly three beeps later, a burst of energy soared up, enshrouding the stone fountain in an arc of blinding blue light whose intense glare was impossible for anyone to view upon directly.

An immediate shock wave from the energy explosion came after Roy and knocked the man off his feet. The ground shook as the fountain collapsed. From the sideline, Jason saw it with squinted eyes that the red-haired man was crouching upon the ground just a several feet away from the collapsing fountain, holding his arm tightly over his head while the stones of the fountain fell and rattled behind him like a hailstorm.

Nobody dared to move until the dazzle of light had died away and the ground had finished shaking. Then everyone was back in motion at once.

Roy hauled himself up on his feet, switching into a defensive position when Lady Shiva, even more furious than she had been a moment ago, rushed forward with a bloodcurdling battle cry and resumed her attack. Bronze Tiger, who now had also gotten ticked off by Roy’s reckless action, dashed away from Jason’s side and came to Shiva’s aiding, even though with the amount of exhaustion and injuries the redhead was enduring, it would seem that Shiva didn’t require an extra pair of hands for seizing him down.

In the meanwhile, Rictus surged up to the sky, hurling himself at Kori before she could get down and help Roy. There’s no sight of Essence anywhere. Jason was pretty sure he had caught a glimpse of her just before the explosion, but now she was gone, vanished like the drift of smoke she was.

Despite the fact that they had been together once during the short period of time he had been with the All-Caste, he had never truly known her. There’s always this great chasm between them, as distinct as the dividing line between the mortal world and the preternatural one, which neither of them could be able to bridge even when they had been in love. But all the differences aside, it did seem rather unlikely to him that Essence, who was the one who had informed him about the massacre of the All-Caste and seemingly more devoted in putting an end to the Untitled than anyone else, would have come into contact with Kori in risk of exposing herself to the eyes of the enemy and accompanied her to where the Untitled had clearly been watching simply to bail at the last moment.

He didn’t know what was so important that Essence had to pull away from the field when the battle was about to begin. To be honest, he didn’t even fully understand what her role was in all this. Notwithstanding the fact that she had been banished by her own mother, she was the blood daughter of the All-Caste, and those immortal monks were cryptic as shit.

It didn’t really matter what Essence was up to anyway. All that mattered right now was that he had a battle to fight, and a battle he should win.

Jason stood by as the League members worked to strike down his own friends, the very same friends for which he would have stick his neck out in an instant regardless of any circumstances, if only it was a couple of weeks ago.

Something had changed inside him in the last few weeks, slowly and unavoidably.

There was some part of him missing, the part of him that was always squirming and groaning restlessly, the part that should’ve been lashing with fury and driving his body to take action in the suffering of his friends. Soon as he had woken up by Ben in the operating room, it had come to Jason that that part of him was gone—silenced off in the mind land. He didn’t know when it was going to return, or if it was going to return to him at all. At this point, he didn’t even think that he cared. In its absence, he had found himself reliving a balsamic sense of serenity, which he had only felt once in a forgotten dream (-- _In the nihility of death, there’s no more restless rancor, no more innermost resentment towards all the big and small injustices in life, no more crying also, no more laughing. No more smashing and bashing. No pain_ )--It had calmed the balefire he had been writhing in for a long time and cleared up his muddled senses.

Given that now he was regarded as the League’s latest leader, he could have called off their attack on his friends at any second, but instead he stood, calm and aloof. It’s not that he no longer cared about his friends now; he might not quite be feeling things in the same way he had been, but still he cared about Roy and Kori just as much as all the virtual reality life times ago. It’s just that now he had a mission to run, and he needed the two of them to stay out of his mission, and they certainly wouldn’t do that unless they were forced to.

Shiva followed up right after Ben had lied Roy down with a kick in his chest, holding the tip of her sword under Roy’s chin to keep him still on the ground. Kori soon was too subdued by Rictus and gotten tossed down next to Roy, who reached out his hands immediately to catch her feeble body.

“Sorry about these angry folks. I’ve only knocked down their front door and blasted off some of their stuffs, I have no idea why they’re getting so pissed,” he murmured dryly, while helping Kori to move into a sitting position.

As to be expected, the bitter sarcasm slipped right past the Tamaranean princess. As if she was wondering why he would say that, she looked around at Roy with some mild confusion. Roy flashed her a smile.

“I know things haven’t exactly been great between us the last time we saw each other, and given how things doesn’t seem to be looking up right now, I should’ve wished for you to never come into this snake pit where all these snaky cutthroats are apparently waiting to cut our throats and all that, but--” he said, voice growing thick with roused emotions as he locked gaze with Kori. “You’re a pure sight for a swollen eye, Your Brilliancy. And I’m just so damn glad to see you.”

“I’m glad to see you too, Roy,” she replied softly. “--And you, Jason.” She reared her head, fixing her earnest and anxious gaze on Jason.

Even though the recent combat with Rictus had left her worn and pallid, her fetching beauty remained all the same. Roy was right, she was a sight to behold, and she would always be a welcoming sight to him no matter what. But as he riveted his eyes upon her beauty, he didn’t just remember how much he adored her and admired her, but also how her eyes would always go strained and turned into a pair of lifeless crystals when she had been murdered many a time in his dreamscape, and that behind all her alien strength and power and her endearing unearthliness, she could be hurt and she would bleed just as easily as any of them human beings.

Kori was saying to him, “When you left, I thought it was only in your best interest that we give you some space, so you could sort out the things that had been troubling you. If I had known the League of Assassins would’ve taken you--”

Lady Shiva broke her off impatiently, “Enough words. Let’s kill them.” She moved her sword around and stepped to Roy’s side, bringing his head up with her spare hand. The blade of her sword pressed tightly against his exposed throat, promising to drew blood with a swift slide.

“No!” Kori stirred and tried to move up, but was immediately forced to sit back on the ground by Rictus’ hands on her shoulders.

Roy grunted vaguely in discomfort, certainly would’ve made a one-liners and such if the pressure on his throat didn’t bind him to silence.

His eyes, now were badly swollen, moved and reached Jason’s, beseeching, but not quite seemed to be for the deliverance from the imminent peril upon himself.

With all the ugly bruises and wounds taking over his used-to-be handsome face, now it’s a bit difficult to make out his features. And yet, he appeared to be exactly how Jason knew him, how he had always dreamt of him and how that he lo—

He averted his gaze.

“Forget about them,” he called to Shiva, flatly and decisively, eyes turning up at the growing shade of blackness flooding over to their way from the perimeter of the city. “—They’re not important. What important right now is the Untitled.”

Not yet feeling entirely certain about his sudden uptake of leadership, Shiva remained stationary, keeping her sword upon her capture and glancing around at Ben for further confirmation.

After taking a measuring look at Jason, Ben began slowly, “We have a couple of holding cells in the castle. I believe Cheshire and Rictus can set down our prisoners in the right place.”

Shiva withdrew her sword then, grabbing Roy up from the ground and tossing him over to Cheshire, who had just gotten back and rejoined the gang after Graystone. Rictus followed as well, holding Kori’s hands behind her back and dragging her up to her feet.

The dimmed glow in Kori’s eyes rekindled as she was moved.

Keenly aware of the fact that Jason was currently in charge of everything happening in here, she said, voice heavy with a mixture of concerns and wounded dignity, “I don’t know what happened to you that would make you want to rally up with these awful people, Jason. But I trust that you know what you’re doing, and that you also know I’ll rather die than have myself be locked up in a cell.”

It was a violation to her dignity, no doubt; and given what she had gone through in her earliest life, sure that the Tamaranean princess would gladly chose death than having her freedom be taken away and her dignity be violated again if only the choice was hers. Jason respected that. He had always got great respect for the princess and he really wished he could spare her such agony; except he couldn’t. ( _He could though. He could always release her from her fated agony--In fact, he could always manage to do a lot of things, if he had gotten just the right push. If the crimes he had committed in the past hadn’t already made clear of that, then all those simulations certainly had cleared it up._ )

Turning his back on the princess, he began to walk away. “I’m sorry you need to go through this. But the two of you need to stay out of my way.”

“Please, Jason, you must listen to me,” Kori called out to his back, struggling fruitlessly to keep Rictus from bringing her away. “I’ve come into contact with Essence and she had told me everything about the Untitled’s plan--What they had told Roy was a lie, they didn’t want to enter this city simply because they’re targeting the League of Assassins--There’s a pit hidden under the fountain, that’s what they’re truly here for. It’s the only thing in this world that can strip away their power. They’re here to destroy it and once that they did, they will be unstoppable. You need all the helps you can get to stop them, Jason, just let us stay and help you--”

“Thank you for offering, Kori. But I’ve already got helps,” he replied plainly, head turning around to give her a nod of acknowledgement and appreciation over his shoulder.

Seeing that he had no intention to change his mind, her shoulders slumped and a look of rueful disappointment drifted upon her face.

Jason turned away once more, only was pulled to a stop when a figure scrambled after him abruptly and steered him around with a hand on his arm.

Somehow, Roy, who was barely able to stand upright, had managed to break himself out of Cheshire’s hold.

Glancing sideways at Roy with impatience, he moved up a hand and took a hold of his wrist, attempting to get his hand off him and free himself. Up there in the sky, the shadows of the Untitled were drifting near to the city center. He didn’t have time for this _\--_ ( _He didn’t have room for this_ _—_ The sharp awareness came waking him up like a basin of cold water pouring over his head. He gave the man a curt, simple reply for his playful remark, and cast his gaze to the side with fixed composure. The link between their eyes came broken. He turned around from the redhead--from the friendly and inviting warmth on his side, from his bright eyes and his smiling lips, from the unspoken promise of things that he just simply did not have room for. He had room for fights and battles. He had room for sex and perhaps even some occasional relationship. But this—what he had perceived on his fair face, beaconing brightly like stars mapping out in a cloudless night--he couldn’t have it, not now. It would be too much, and he had still had much too much to deal with--The smile on Roy’s face turned strained at his sudden but not unexpected retreat. His gaze at Jason grew briefly pensive. Then, as if nothing had happened, he continued his previous chattering with his smile back in order. And Jason appreciated it, and thought to himself that one day—one day when he had finally managed to sort out all this consuming messes in his life, then _ **perhaps** —_perhaps.)

The throbbing of his pulse, faint but definite, reverberated to Jason’s palm and fixed him to the spot. Instead of getting Roy away from him, he stood at a loss of thoughts, holding Roy’s wrist in his hand as if he was shocked by the evidence of his aliveness.

The numbness in him subsided as his heart moved slightly on a sudden.

“I dunno how badly you’re brainwashed and if there’s still a right-headed part of you in there that can hear me, but I need you to know this, so you just listen,” Roy was saying to him in a slurry, hurried murmur. “--My head is spinning like crazy, so I’m having some really big trouble to catch up and understand fully what Kori just said, but it kind of sounded like I messed up and started a Armageddon or some shit, and I’m sorry if that’s what I did, but I can still—I can still get you out of here--I _will_ get you out of here, Jason, I promise—I’ll…I’ll figure out something in a snap, so you just—you just stay alive and wait for me, Jaybird. You just…you just don’t die, okay?”

With a vexed look on her face, Cheshire stepped forward in an obvious attempt to reclaim the redhead into her custody. His hand around Roy’s wrist tightened as the woman came close. Then in a moment, he let go of Roy entirely.

“I have no plan of dying today,” replied Jason in a plain voice, as he turned the redhead over to Cheshire. “--And you didn’t start this, Roy. This mess had been started long before you. You just stay away with Kori and let me end this.”

What happened today would happen, with or without Roy’s involvement. And the only reason he would ever get involved in this was because he was part of Jason’s life. If he wasn’t, the Untitled would have never sought him out, never would have dug their claws into him and driven him onto a road of hardship and danger.

Back then, when Jason had first found out about the massacre the Untitled had committed in the Chamber of All, he had wanted revenge, wanted to wage war on those evil beings and made them pay for their crime against the All-Caste, his used-to-be teacher. But the spirit of Ducra had convinced him otherwise. _Turn away,_ she said. _No more vengeance,_ she said. _No more pursuance of war._

He had listened to her then, thinking that she had known best. Only now, standing in an occurring warzone after weeks of oppression and exploitation, he had come to realize that there’s no turning away _\--_ That it was in his written fate that he would be standing in here to face those murderers, and that his current torments must not be ended until he **_ended them_** ( _“--Are you certain that’s what you wish for?”_ she asked, after he had walked out of the Chamber of All and returned to her with a request for a different teacher so he could be taught with a different set of skills. The All-Caste taught the art of powerful magic, but it was an art of peace. The art of death was what he needed for his deadly plan. _“Just hook me up with your guys. I can go back to Gotham with what I’ve already had, but for what I’m about to do, I’ll rather to have myself more equipped,”_ he said determinedly to Talia, who regarded him in thought for a moment before complying to his request).

The Untitled had always been a threat that were waiting to explode in his face. If he would’ve just chased them down right from the beginning--if he would’ve just listened to his _own_ guts and rooted them out—None of this shit would’ve ever happened. If the Untitled hadn’t come this close to their door and posed them with such great threat, the League might not even grow to need him so badly that they would’ve done whatever it took to get him.

Those evil beings had only come this far because Jason had allowed them, had given them the chance to grow and to form out their assault plan. He had run away from a fight with them when he should’ve run towards it. It was his mistake.

As Cheshire and Rictus took his friends away to the holding cells, Jason walked towards the coming battle with the rest of the League following him closely. As much as he would like to make Ben and the rest of the League suffer for what they had put him through, he needed to set aside his personal vendetta for now. If he was to strike down the Untitled, he needed the League’s assistance, their strength.

The Man-Bat Commandos had been sent out to drive off the approaching enemies shortly after they had recovered from Roy’s previous attack; and only in a matter of time, they were scattered once more. The Untitled had gotten past all the resistance forces and soon arrived in the center of the city.

As Jason stood in the face of these immortal enemies, a pulse of energy coursed through him and his hands were suddenly lit by a magical glow.

He frowned at his own blazing hands, getting confused for a short moment before he came to a full realization of what this was inside him and what was the meaning of it.

It would seem that after all Ducra had said to deter him from seeking fight with the Untitled, she had known all along that he would’ve stood against them one day.

All her wise moralistic words, all the talking in riddles, the time she had reached out to him as he had kneel beside her decayed corpse and the time she had visited his dream in her spiritual form—It kind of seemed to Jason now those were all nothing but just a mean of **_manipulation_** _._

A chill of irritation came upon him. He cleared it out of his head and turned to focus on the summoning of the remains of the All-Caste’s magic that Ducra had secretly left within him for this specific battle.

It had been a long time since he had attempted at the All-Caste’s magic. _“--Purge yourself of your past, of the maelstrom in your spirit,”_ Ducra had used to require him back in the days, saying that to access their Arcanum and to fully exert its power, he must cleanse his mind, let it bore no shadows. He had yet been able to do that; in fact, he had walked out on her, when she had pressed over and over again that he must let go of the horrors he had experienced and turn away from the dark endless path of vengeance and hatred.

Only now, with the constant gnawing within him snuffed out, his mind was crystalline.

A pair of glowing sword— _“The All-Blades”_ , whose name Jason learnt from a ghosting whisper at the back of his head--manifested in his hands presently.

After the fall of the sacred fountain, the ground beneath it had split and caved in, opened up a dark gap by which the stone debris above had been swallowed and quickly dissolved into the pit’s eldritch substance, leaving now a hollow in the ground.

While the rest of his kind was joining battles with the League, the one who was the Untitled’s leader came face to face with Jason, who stood against him with the weapon that was made to destroy all that was the construct of magic and the waking will to destroy what it must be destroyed.

As the fight proceed, Jason found himself become more and more energized, as if he had been laid in dormant for a long time and only now had he come awake to life.

Each time his swords landed a strike on his enemy, his heart was shoot through by a surge of rapture. He felt powerful, and it wasn’t just the drug that the Doctor had given him earlier to jump-start his body, but because he could feel from the depth of his being that he could’ve _won_ this, that finally— ** _finally_** \--after weeks of losing and losing everyone and everything--from his grasp of control to his sanity to the people he cared—he was going to have a win.

The same whispering voice that provided Jason with the information about his swords resounded in his head, prompting him to drive the Untitled into the pit— _“The Well of Sin,”_ said the voice.

His swords moved deftly, cutting off the Untitled’s choice of movement and steering him backwards to the edge of the pit. The Untitled struggled to keep his footing, but quickly fell into his downfall after Jason had given him a kick in the chest.

A shriek sounded through the battlefield as the Untitled’s leader was submerged in the dark water. The immense power he had originally obtained from the Well of Sin was now being drawn out of his body and returned to its fount.

In a moment, the leader of the Untitled was spit out of the dark water.

With his immortal magic drained away in full, he had degenerated into his true form, which was nothing but a set of old brittle bones.

“ _Please--_ ” the old man pleaded in a horrible screech, dragging himself off the pit and back to the surface. His shaky hand held out to Jason. “- _-Please help me…_ ”

Jason’s swords lowered as he stood regarding the squirming old man.

The old and defeated tried to say more, and was cut short when Lady Shiva drove off her own opponent and stepped in.

Her sword thrust into the old man’s back and pinned him down on the ground.

Jason turned to look at her as she retrieved her sword.

“If you’re truly going to become our leader, you better not have any problem with this,” started Shiva flatly.

Giving one last look at the dying old man, Jason turned around and reengaged into combat with the remaining Untitled. Shiva stuck by and helped him.

“It doesn’t seem like you’re too thrilled to have me as your leader,” he said in the middle of slinging his magical swords.

“I’m not,” Shiva replied, while driving one of the Untitled towards Jason’s way so he could send him down into the pit. “--Bronze Tiger thinks the simulations we gave you have helped you see the light. I think there’s hardly any light in you and you may try to stab our back as soon as this is over.”

“Guess you may want to watch your back then,” responded Jason indifferently.

In a moment, all the Untitled had fallen down in the pit, and all was slain soon after they had resurfaced in a powerless form.

The All-Blades vanished from Jason’s hands as the fight was finished.

With a calm sense of fulfillment in his heart, he stood taking a look at the carcasses around, before turning his gaze gradually on the pit, which had relapsed into compete stillness since the last ripple on its surface had eased away.

The pristine blackness of the still water captured his eyes. He stared at it for a moment, with an eerie feeling slowly creeping upon him.

Ben moved towards his side after he had ordered a couple of Man-Bat soldiers to clean up the dead bodies, attempting to ask Jason for instruction on what they should do with the exposed pit.

Before the man could voice his words, a figure in a black cloak appeared suddenly from a distance, shattering the short post-battle quietude and spurring everyone back into alarm in an instant.

Jason moved his eyes from the pit and glanced over, as Ben turned to point his own sword at the unexpected intruder and demanded for an identification.

There’s no reply to Ben’s inquiry; only a command was sounded. “--Sheathe your blades.”

The members of the League, all with their weapons drew up and directed at the mystic figure, stiffened at the magisterial male voice. Then the man in black cloak slowly threw back his hood and revealed his face, setting off the thin agitation in the air into a full blown astonishment.

A moment’s hesitation, then the League of Assassins lowered their weapons as they were bade.

How silly of him to think this was over. A sneer crossed Jason’s lips as he watched Ra’s al Ghul making his way to the pit and him.

 

***

 

Seeing the fountain begin to fall, she could no longer be concerned about maintaining her discretion.

Regardless of the fact that the Untitled might have discovered her influence, she called to her daughter through their psychic link, demanding her to retreat from the city center immediately.

As for now, the League of Assassins was greatly roused by Arsenal’s reckless action and determined to take down the young man and everyone who aided him. She couldn’t afford to have Essence stay there and risk her own safety in a petty fight against those vicious killers.

Though her magic was great, the girl herself wasn’t invaluable, and there’re people in the League whose power might have hurt her if she was to revealed herself in her physical form and combat them. For what she was fated to do, she must be kept safe and reserve her strength.

Without the knowledge of her importance in all this, Essence tried to argue, saying she must stay and help the others and demanding to know why Ducra wasn’t doing anything if she was monitoring the event all along.

“There’s no time,” she said to her daughter curtly. “Come to me at once, then I’ll explain everything.”

After a moment of struggles, the girl complied and turned to find Ducra at a lonely spot outside the city perimeter far off from the battlefield.

Using the small remain of her magic, she cast a revelation spell through which she and her daughter could watch everything in the city center, then she began to tell the girl what she had been keeping from her for a long time.

The day when Ducra’s bothers and sisters had been infected by the arcane substance they had discovered in a well and therefore turned into the defiled Untitled, Essence had been there, and she had been touched by the dark water as well.

The dark water did not change her the way it had changed Ducra’s bothers and sisters, though it did give her an psychic connection with their contained minds and alter her physical state.

Since then, many centuries had passed; until one day, a while before Jason’s departure from the All-Caste, Essence had come to Ducra, informed her that she had sensed their perverted relatives had been growing more and more restless at the endless stalemate between them, and suggested that she should leave the Chamber of All to track them down and keep them in check.

Ducra had agreed then, and told her daughter that if she was to do such, she must sever her connections with everyone, including their clan, and that in order to keep her connection with the Untitled from coming into exposure and thus being used against them, she would be sentenced to exile in front of the others and let no one else know the true reason of her parting.

What she didn’t tell Essene before she had sent her off into the mission was that she knew for some time that the Untitled would soon come and bring destruction upon their clan, and that she mustn’t be with the rest of them when that day came; Essence must stay away, not so she could survive and revenge them—No. Never revenge—but so that one day she could do what she must.

“The corrupting power of the Well of Sin mustn’t fall into anyone’s hand,” she said to Essence clearly, while they were watching the Untitled break in to the city central and soon engage into a full combat with Jason and the League.

The All-Blades and her had chosen Jason to be their champion from long ago. With his inborn strength and fierceness and the fund of life he carried within himself, it had always been in Ducra’s belief that he would be the one who defeated the Untitled and therefore returned their power to its source, and now seeing how the battle had proceeded, it would seem that she was right, Jason had indeed been able to control the All-Blades and was striking the Untitled with it.

Soon, the Untitled was no more and the Well of Sin was imbued once again just as it was supposed to be.

However, the ordeal had yet come to an end, neither for them nor Jason.

In a moment, Ra’s al Ghul entered the scene, demanding the League of Assassins to stand down as he slowly approached the Well of Sin. The League, of which he had long since lost the control to his own daughter, hesitated, but did put down their weapons at last, and turned to stand aside and watch their old leader come upon their new one with silent anticipation, clearly had come to a decision that they should just wait for the two men to decide it among themselves which one of them would be their true leader.

While Ra’s’ sudden presence had put a confused and anxious look on Essence’s face, it did not come to a surprise to Ducra.

It had long since come to her notice that there’s someone working behind the Untitled’s attack. Everything that was happening today had begun at the massacre in the Chamber of All, whose location had been kept safely away from the Untitled for centuries. The Untitled wouldn’t have been able to find their way to the hidden Chamber without help. There’re only a few people in this world who had the access to the sacred place, and Ra’s was one of them.

It was him who had leaded the Untitled to destroy Ducra’s clan, so they could pave their way into this city without their biggest impediment, and thus falling into their doom and refilling the Well of Sin for the Demon’s Head himself.

“Well done, young Jason Todd,” said Ra’s to Jason, “I must admit that I was doubtful, as to whether or not you hold the capability to complete such crucial task. Despite your aptitude for the All-Caste’s exclusive magic, I have yet quite considered you to be someone of much remarkable qualities. As an apprentice of the Detective, you aren’t exactly the most…outstanding, in my eyes. But since you did manage to vanquish the Untitled and replenish the Well of Sin with their power, I suppose my daughter was right, you do have some value in you, after all.”

“You can be a real dick sometimes, you know that?” Jason replied plainly, then turned into a moment of thoughts. “—Does it mean that Talia didn’t have the League kidnap me and play with my head for weeks because she actually wanted me to replace her and take charge of the League, but because she was working on your side and she was helping you to get me into siding up with your men and taking out the Untitled for you?”

He shook his head reflectively. “Man, and I just thought she grew crazy because of her bad gene.”

The wisecrack did not amuse the Demon’s Head. He replied coldly, “My daughter had obtained full control of the League ever since my…departure, and she and I were long since working together. Whatever instruction that she had left to the League of Assassins was no part of my design. If Talia said that she wanted you to be her successor, I trust that she meant that. She did always feel a kinship with you, much to my bafflement.”

The man’s eyes were drew by the black water soon as he had came to the edge of the pit. The flash of avarice in his green eyes was captured perfectly by the magical viewer for Ducra to see.

Without giving another look at Jason, the man bade simply, “Take a leave now, Jason. The League is no longer in need for any fulfillment to the empty throne after my return. As grateful as I am of your participation, your part here is over.”

Certainly, Jason had no intent to comply.

In spite of his strong words and his great confidence, the Demon’s Head didn’t appear to be at his best. It had come to Ducra’s notice that his face was a bit wan and dusty, and his gait didn’t quite have the strong momentum it usually carried.

That must be why he would’ve initiated such poor and dirty scheme to imbue the Well of Sin at the expense of his long-term alliance with the All-Caste.

As of this moment, the once great and powerful Ra’s al Ghul was weak and desperate. Ducra had little knowledge of where the man had been of late, but whatever journey he had come through, it had left him wilted and ill and in an prominent need to be recharged by the Well’s power.

Jason seemed to have noticed his bad condition as well, and come to see this as a great chance to defeat the Demon’s Head once and for all.

The All-Blades reappeared in Jason’s hands. He swung the swords at Ra’s’ body, except their blades were made to cut merely the construct of magic, hence they passed through the man’s flesh leaving him unharmed. Jason disassembled the All-Blades then, turning to reach for his guns instead.

In a mutual share of growing anxiety, Ducra and Essence fixed their eyes on the viewer, watching it as the two man began combating at the side of the pit.

A moment later, one of Jason’s bullets caught Ra’s in his thigh. Seeing that the man had stumbled all the way at the pit’s edge and begun to fall over, Jason hurled himself up to his way, arms stretching out to grab him.

Stirred by the imagery of the two man fell into the Well of Sin together, Essence leaned forward and cried out Jason’s name with instant dread, notwithstanding the fact that she was far off from the site.

“I must get back there!” She tossed her head around to Ducra, looking at her with an eager stare which reminded her that, although her daughter had been on the face of the earth for many years, she was still a young soul inside and out.

“You must reserve your strength,” Ducra replied, keeping her mien calm and suggesting her daughter to do likewise. “--As I have told you earlier, it is not your duty to get between the fights of the mankind. Jason had already defeated the Untitled, and now he must proceed in defeating Ra’s too. It is his mission to battle the enemies, yours is to ensure that the Well of Sin will threaten the world no more. Ra’s is arrogant to think he could take possession of it and control such wild force without falling into its rein, but his darkened soul would only make him its easiest prey. It is in the Well’s nature--its being--to bring chaos and disaster upon this world through the sentient life forms. It shall not be hosted by Ra’s, or anyone. You must become its next and final host. As for all we know, you are the only one who is immune to its corruptible influence. And if you was to entomb it within yourself and save the world from its infection, you must wait in patience for the time being.”

Due to her immunity, the Well would not respond to Essence and come inside her; only when it began to bind itself to another body, which Ducra assumed would be rising back from the pit in a mere moment, its defense would momentarily lower and allow Essence to seize the wild force and absorb it.

Essene, knowing what her mother spoke of was true and that she must commit herself to the greater good, suppressed her desire to come to Jason’s help, and returned to standing by and staring at the viewer ruefully.

Since the revelation spell could not reach the Well’s darkness, they were left with nothing to look at but a freeze-frame of the hollow on the surface for a moment.

As they stood waiting in trepidation, Essence asked, voice quiet and bleak, “--Tell me, Mother, if Jason has survived his fight against Ra’s al Ghul and come back from the pit, in which form do you think he would come back?”

She turned to face her daughter, meeting her anxious gaze with sorrow. “I can no longer say,” she replied, a look of resignation passed her face.

It was certain that the same infection that had taken away Ducra’s bothers and sisters millennium ago would try to infect Jason as well as it would Ra’s, and the only way he could fight the infection and retain control of himself was to remain lightness in his soul.

Her faith in Jason had not failed over the years. From the day he had been brought to her domain--young and freshly back from the oblivion, looking at Ducra with sunken eyes that were burning in blaze of vengeance and utter life force--she had known that he was the warrior she had been waiting for, and that despite his great trauma, the light within him had yet been snuffed out.

When Jason had walked away from her teaching of balance and peace, and turned to chase his dark urges, she had been the most rueful, but she did not stop him, trusting that he would one day find his path back to lightness. And for awhile, it seemed that his days had indeed brightened, until once again, the darkness had seized him.

Ever since the Joker had attacked him and the rest of his family in Gotham, his mind had been in a turmoil. Ducra could sense it through the psychic link she had build inside Jason, and thereupon had came to a decision that she must form out a plan to ensure that he wouldn’t be taken by his growing darkness.

She had intended to draw Jason back to the Chamber of All, in which he would be greeted by S’aru and having his mind and his memories cleansed, for only then he would be in his best shape and have the strength to face the dark force of the Well of Sin should this day come. But Talia—as arrogant as her own father, had thought she could come up with a better plan.

Instead of delivering Jason from his doubts and unrest and his agonizing past, she had had her crew painted him in a died corner, breaking him down repeatedly in the belief that he would only come back stronger.

On the surface, Talia’s plan had seemed to be working. Jason had indeed managed to wield the All-Blades, which could not be wielded with a distraught mind, and defeated the Untitled with his most focus. But there’s no doubt that the trial to his mind had corroded him and driven him towards a darker place.

The serenity that Ducra had sensed inside Jason during his earlier battles was cold and disconcerting. She hoped she could reach him, and guide him through the ordeal he was certainly going through inside the Well of Sin at the moment; unfortunately, her spiritual force could not penetrate the arcane darkness, just as it could not penetrate the protection shield around the city until it had been disabled awhile ago.

“The transfer of power will be the most difficult to complete, if whoever—or whatever—that arises from the pit is overtaken by its darkness and has resolved to claim the power for himself,” she said to her daughter, “But it is your obligation to the world to complete this task. You must extract the dark power from its new host, by any mean necessary.”

Essence lowered her head, taking a moment to rein in her whirling emotions, then looked up again at the static imagery in the viewer. “I understand, Mother,” she replied in the end, face set with doleful resolution.

 

***

 

The light went out in an instant.

With a thick fabric of darkness shrouded over his eyes and ears, he stood alone, utterly confused. There’s no sight, no sound, no anything he could pick up with his senses; it was as if the entire world had lapsed into a complete blackout, or had just simply disappeared.

Then on a sudden, a faint gasping sound broke out at his side. He turned around abruptly.

Seemed to be triggered by his motion, a single light flashed on from above, diluting the impervious darkness and bringing forth a pale twilight before Jason’s eyes.

Inside the poor light, he found Kori. The ever so beautiful Tamaranean princess was standing across him in just a few steps away, her eyes strained and coated with a spiritless sheen.

“I trusted you,” she murmured in complaint, her sweet voice thin and quivered with the extreme of sadness and agony.

The warm orange hue of Kori’s face was now spoiled by dried blood. There’s a bullet hole in her forehead. Jason didn’t know why or when or how, but he knew it was _him_.

Knowing exactly what he was facing, he adverted his gaze from his dying friend. Kori held out a shaky hand, trying to grab him as he began to walk past her. Her hand dropped back to her side after its failed attempt to touch him, then she staggered forward, falling face down into the wet surface.

From the corner of Jason’s eye, he could see her body sink and presently disappear into the dark water; and on he walked, still with no dread, no urge to reach out to help and save her and fix whatever the fuck he had done that would’ve lead her to this.

An _illusion_ , was all this really was, which he had seen before, too many times for him to count and care.

The darkness around was trying to seize him with pain and terror, but he could not be seized by things that he had grown quite used to. (The first time his fist had crashed into his face, it felt like the world he lived had crashed also. He had yet been so frightened, so terribly shaken by anything in his life until that moment when Dad’s fist hit and his cheek came broken and marred by the wedding ring--brass made with a cheap fake stone that matched with Mom’s--on his third finger. He had fallen down on his side with his eyes brimmed with hot tears, utterly shocked by the dawning awareness of “ _ **no, no this world isn’t safe**_ ”—As his mom had came crying his name and held him up, he had thought to himself that he must be good and quiet like Dad had told him to from now on, so he wouldn’t have to live through this extreme horror again--Only a couple of times later, he had grown used to it and learnt that the hit he had experienced was merely a part of life and he didn’t even squeak when he was hit by Dad or anyone else, for whatever reason or no reason at all.)

He continued his path through the twilight. Another conjured of the darkness appeared in his way and tried to intercept him.

“So many times I’ve warned you,” Bruce was saying, “But you never listen. Never understand.”

Dick and Tim, of course, were right by his sides, looking at Jason with the same stern accusing look Bruce had on his set face. The little one wasn’t here though, due to the obvious reason that he had already been murdered by someone else’s hand so he could not be hurt by Jason and become his potential victim.

Jason let out a curt laugh at the stupidity of it before resuming his tracks, certain that in no way he could actually make Bruce or the others his victim, even if he did try and hurt them.

If they should fall, it surely wouldn’t be because of him. They would only fall sticking to their own faith in their own terms, as a hero (--Like Damian. A transgressor the kid was raised and a hero he died. When Jason had met Bruce in Ethiopia, he had wondered if the man had even realized, just how much his question about his resurrection had hurt him, not quite for the reason that he didn’t make the effort to bring Jason back as he was doing for Damian, but mostly for the fact that seeing how much he grieved for his heroic son merely had reminded Jason that, even though he had been taught a hero, he had died nothing but another poor murder victim).

The thought that he would one day become responsible for their potential deaths and suffering had hardly crossed Jason’s mind, unlike Kori and Roy’s.

 _“--Your team is your responsibility,”_ someone had said to him at some point during his short period in the Teen Titans. It had been a lifetime ago, so he couldn’t quite remember who, he could only assume it was Dick, the natural born leader who knew all there was about leadership.

The funny thing was, he had never cared about being a leader. All he had wanted back then was to go out in his brand new Robin suit kicking asses and saving lives with Batman, not being responsible for a bunch of people of which he had barely known and having them look up at him with the expectation that he would handle things just as good as Dick used to and ending up feeling like an asshole whenever he had failed to meet their expectations.

It was different with Roy and Kori; though Jason did call the shot often, he had never truly considered himself their leader.

Once, Kori had said that every team needed a leader, and if they’re going to become a team, then surely they would need one too. She had suggested that Jason should be it, since he seemed to be the one who had got all the ideas of where they should go and what they should do, and he did seem quite commanding. Roy, being his insufferable self, had quickly snickered and said, _“It **is** the earth tradition to follow the lead of an imperial presence from the royal Bat family when they've come to lead us, I suppose.”_— _“Mind your words or you should be beheaded, wretch,”_ Jason had replied sternly, then turned to Kori and said that it’s fine if they didn’t have a team leader, because they weren’t any team at all, they were just people who came together and did things together and everyone was free to decide where they should go and what they should do with themselves— _“Tomato, tomahto,”_ Roy had chimed in. _“And you know you can just use the word “friends” in here, it’s a safe space.”_

As he continued to walk forward, the mirage of Bruce and the others sunk and dissolved into the wet dark ground just like the mirage of Kori.

Soon after, he ran into Roy, who looked at him with one eye swum with utter dismay, while his other one was blinded by bullets and now a black empty hole.

A spasm of nausea roused Jason’s stomach.

Roy’s voice spoke drearily in the twilight, “I wish I’ve never met you. Never tried to lov--”

“Shut up,” he spat out bluntly, pushing past the illusionary figure and continued to move on.

In a moment, the endless blackness before him shrunk and reduced into its true form.

Same as Jason had thought, he was currently inside a wading pool which was only several feet beneath the city surface. The light of the afternoon sun poured into the gloom of the pit, allowing Jason to catch the sight of Ra’s, with whom he had been fighting and had fallen together in the Well of Sin.

The old man was standing numbly at the other side of the pit, looking haunted and distraught.

Considering how many horrors the Demon’s Head must have lived through and also been responsible of in his prolonged life, Jason could not image what kind of dark things he was seeing that could have stunned him and made his face wrung in fright and remorse like this.

He guessed that the spell of the dark pit must have been more powerful than he had realized, and if it wasn’t for the mental perpetration he had been given, he might have been seized deep and fast by the spell just as well as Ra’s was.

He ironically thanked Talia for her “mental exercises”, for it had given him the protection against the psychic attack from the pit, and thus the mobility he needed at the moment to cut off a cancer like her old man.

Cancer like Ra’s was why this world was so terminally ill. All the unceasing pain and deaths and misfortunes they brought, spreading through everyone and everywhere, and letting no one and nowhere to be safe. And they never went away—No. No matter how many times they had been fought back, they always managed to return, even bigger and stronger, and set off relentlessly to strike some more.

Well, no more.

There’s a sword floating on the surface of the murky water before Ra’s. The man must have dropped his sword in his falling. Jason picked it up quietly, decided that it would only be the most suitable if the Demon’s Head had died by his own sword.

He wondered if this was all still part of Talia’s plan. Judging by what Ra’s had said earlier in the city surface and the way he had talked about his daughter, it would seem that their father and daughter relationship hadn’t been going well for a long time. Jason wondered if that’s why Talia had so insisted for him to take her throne, so she could have someone to stand between her old man and his reclamation of power in her absence, maybe even kill the old man for her.

It wouldn’t surprise Jason if it was true; behind all her shrewd wits and her deadly talents, the woman had never truly been anything but a slave to her own heart, which, as far as Jason knew, had been torn by the great opposite forces between her love to her father and her love to Bruce and their son, until, as a reasonable result, it had broken into shreds and shattered her sanity along the way. Seeing that Talia’s shattered love was exactly what had driven her into destroying Gotham of late and making everyone in it suffer, there’s absolutely no reason to think that she wouldn’t want to make her dad suffer just as much as she did her beloved Batman and their son.

It didn’t really matter though, whether or not he was still following Talia’s plan and acting as her trigger man. The Demon’s Head needed to be gone and that’s final.

How Damian might have felt, if he had learnt that Jason had killed his grandpa?—Pausing with the sword in his hand, Jason pondered, then he quickly snuffed out the thought. The poor kid was dead already, so his opinion really didn’t meant squat.

The sword moved and fell deadly upon Ra’s, certainly would’ve sliced the old man in half--if his eyes hadn’t managed to catch the flash of the blade and dashed away immediately.

Still, the blade bit him. The man let out a low angry grunt as his arm was torn and turning to bleed. He made some attempts to strike back, but with one of his leg limped by Jason’s bullet during their earliest combat upon the city surface, he soon found himself having no choice but to retreat.

His hand reached under his black cloak and quickly pulled out a teleportation device. Seeing the old man was attempting to escape, Jason hastened over, swinging down the sword viciously upon him.

The sword slashed and cut across nothing but a fading image of the Demon’s Head, who had enabled the teleportation device just a split second ago and fled promptly to safety.

_Damn it--_

In an instant frustration, Jason stabbed the edge of Ra’s sword roughly on the wet ground, eyes glaring at the empty spot where the Demon’s Head had initially been standing.

The fact that he had thwarted the old man’s plan and driven him off brought him no sense of relief or triumph. He didn’t mean to _drive him away_ , there’s no win in that. Bruce had driven him away many a time and it had changed absolutely nothing ( _“--A repetition of delays,_ ” Ben had said. _“A reprieve, that’s what they’ve managed to provide, not a solution.”_ The man might have be in the wrong about great many things, but Jason couldn’t say he was really wrong about this) _._

While Jason was standing in the dark pit, with his mind roused by a sense of futility and the flames it had lit up, the pool of dark water rippled beneath him.

Sensing the faint quiet movement, he looked down. The dark water hurled up—And before his brain could register what was happening, he was swirling in a rough sea of darkness.

In an instant, his eyes turned blind, and his ears was assaulted by a horrid composition of angry screams and broken sobs and manic laughter and the sound of bashing and smashing against flesh and so on.

The noises made Jason’s ears bleed and his brain hurt so bad, he couldn’t help but tuck his head under his arms and begin to shout out in pain.

To his greater horror, something whisked inside his mouth once he had opened it, pushing the shout he had in making back in the deep of his throat with its smooth slim body that reeked of decay and felt like it was a snake made of cold nothing.

Hurriedly, he scraped his mouth with his fingers, catching it by its tail in a moment and pulled it out; but as soon as it was dragged out of Jason’s mouth, its body extended on a sudden and wrapped around his wrist, straggling round and round him like vines.

He struggled rabidly to pry it off, but it was no use. It had spread all over his body, shrouded him up quickly from head to toe.

All the while, the dreadful music grew louder and louder in Jason’s ears. He felt like he had finally come to yelling, but he wasn’t sure if it was true since he could hear nothing but the terrible mix of noises.

The being of cold nothingness he was wrapped in wasn’t at all like the nothingness of death Jason could remember; there’s no serenity about it, no relief; it was writhing and it was shrieking, and it was no longer so much as frosty cold when it was now wringing him like a wet cloth and pushing bit by bit some of its massive quantity past his skin to the depths of him.

Once it had reached his inside, it came scorching, burning Jason up with a molten heat of what seemed to be a world of rancor.

From the outside, the pressure against him continued quickening. Since he was in a raging swirl and his eyes was blind inside the darkness, he couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down, and with his inside bursting out in flames and his outside crushed down by the extreme pressure, he couldn’t tell which part of him was in and which part was out either.

It would appear that, since the Well of Sin couldn’t work its spell on him like it could to Ra’s, it had no longer wanted to put him under spell, but had decided that it should just kill him--not his body, but his entire being.

Everything in his perception was _killing_ him. And he didn’t feel like he could survive this. The forces of this roaring sea of darkness were too great, he felt like soon he was just going to die all over again— _“You just stay alive and wait for me, Jaybird,”_ a voice reached him across the roaring dark sea in which he was drowning and swirling, _“You just…you just don’t die, okay?”_ —The Well of Sin couldn’t kill him. Fuck it. He had no plan to die today.

Summoned up all his strength, he struggled tenaciously against the tightening forces that were crushing down upon him; in a moment, he broke out from the hold of the writhing, shrieking serpent of darkness, and began to swim at once toward what he assumed was the way up.

He couldn’t see a thing still, but he knew the surface was right above his head, and if he could just continue swimming, he could get right back to it.

Before he could reach the surface and come back under the sunlight that he knew for certain was staring down in the pit, the lashing darkness caught him by his legs, dragging him down and down into its swirling depth.

He tried to kick it away, arms held up waving and grasping desperately above his head. Then on a sudden, one of his hand was caught by another hand.

Grasping at the hand tightly, he used it to drag himself up.

“—Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.”

Hearing the soothing voice at his side, Jason shifted his crazed eyes around. The redhead was crouching at the side of his bed, on which he had woken up in a spring and sat panting.

Keeping Roy’s hand in a tight clasp, he spent a moment to ease his breathing and his strained nerves, then he dropped his clammy hand from Roy and began to move himself off his bed. “--I’m more than okay. I’m peachy,” he replied in a mutter, voice thick and gritty from the night terror.

The light in his room was on, he walked towards his closet with a steady gait.

“The peach is peachy, you’re sweating and looking as pale as my ass,” Roy remarked, dryly and evenly.

“You ever consider getting your ass tanned?” retorted Jason with a dull edge of fretfulness in his tone. Opened his closet, he paused before it for a moment, then began to peel off his sweaty loungewear and change into his Red Hood suit.

Roy’s gaze at his back, same as his concerns for him, had such strong presence, it was as though it was material. Jason didn’t look back, continued to get dress and pack up his weapons.

“It’s three in the morning,” the redhead pointed out in a musing tone.

He shrugged. “What better time of day to get on with the Halloween’s spirit than the witching hour.”

“I thought it’s between midnight and two a.m..”

“Not from where I was brought up,” replied Jason mildly. “You see, in where I was brought up, it always starts at the presence of scumbags and ends in my fists on their faces.”

“That sounds super factual,” the redhead hummed in mock agreement. A moment’s pausing, then he offered, “--I can go and do some scumbag-punching with you.”

“I’ve already called dibs on that. You just stay home and get some rest,” Jason declined, without slowing his tracks for a second.

Roy followed him out presently as he walked past the bedroom door.

“Jay.”

His voice sounded behind Jason at the middle of the living room, quiet but insistent. A hand of his held out to Jason’s way. “It has been months already, I know how much you hate to hear this--”

“Then why don’t you keep your mouth shut and _don’t say it,_ ” Jason cut him short in an sudden surge of anger, twisting around and swatting away Roy’s hand without thinking.

When a small but clear _slap_ resounded in the quiet room, Jason had came to find it feeling quite like a slap on his own face.

He had done it again. Fuck.

“I’m sorry,” he uttered, eyes fixing contritely on the rejected hand--the same warm and caring hand that had pulled him out from his many nightmares—as it was now hanging frozen in the air, uncertain of where to land. “I just…I need to go out and get some air by myself.”

Slowly and tentatively, Roy moved his hand once more.

Jason didn’t swat it away this time when it came reaching for his shoulder, just stood with his face turning slightly to the side, so he wouldn’t have to meet Roy’s gaze which he was certain would be too much for him to handle at the moment.

In front of his eyes, he saw that Kori was lying asleep on the couch. The TV was on, she must have been watching it with Roy before she had dozed off.

“Whatever happened with the League--with the Untitled and Ra’s and the Well of Sin--it was all over, Jay. You’re safe now,” Roy was saying.

“I know,” he replied, eyes staring out dumbly at the vicinity of Kori.

“It doesn’t seem like you do,” Roy pointed out, tone bleak but tender. “I’m not trying to push you or anything, you know I’ll never do that. I’m totally cool if you just wanna solider on and get back to business and never go to see someone for all the traumatizing shit you’ve just been through, that’s what you always did and you’re functioning fine in your own dysfunctional way, so I’m fine with that. But this--” He shook his head faintly. “How many times have you woken up from nightmares and ran out to the streets. How long you haven’t been sleeping?”

“I had plenty of nightmares before. That never kills me, or disfunctions my dysfunctional functions.”

“This time is different and you know it. The things you went through in that city—it did a number on you, Jaybird. I’ve never seen you so shaken.”

He made no reply to that, just stood relapsing into silence. Roy’s hand on his shoulder moved, rising up slightly as if it was about to touch his face and try to wipe away whatever lousy things that were showing on it. Eventually, the hand settled down again on Jason’s shoulder, and a sense of relief came to him at the same time a sense of woe did in equal measure.

Lips lifting up into a thin strained smile, Roy spoke in a half-joking tone, “You might have heard things differently from the backwater part of the country you grew up, but seeking proper help and treatment for traumas won’t always give you herpes.”

He let out an amused snort at that, and saw it from the corner of his eye that Roy’s smile had grown at his visible amusement. He couldn’t help but let his face relax a little, and turned to meet Roy’s gaze directly.

And there—there was that look again, warm and kind and affectionate, with all that unspoken offerings and promises, shedding upon him the brightness of hope like the morning sun.

For a moment, he was captured utterly by that look, and forgot all about the gnawing and the silent voices and the dark urges that had been following him closely ever since the sacred city of 'Eth Alth'eban.

Then the flickers of his experiences in the sacred city ran through him and the gnawing and the voices and the dark urges came back to him at once. He faced away abruptly, shattering the link between his eyes and Roy’s the same way he always did.

Someday, perhaps. But not today—he thought to himself bleakly.

“I’ll be back in a moment, don’t worry,” he said, before heading out of the safe house, didn’t turn back once to see if the redhead was staring after him with a sorrowful look. He knew he was.

Time flew as he roved about the streets.

Like a starving animal that had just broken out of its cage, he chased down any smell of crimes and pounced hungrily upon it whenever he had found one; never took a moment to rest or came to notice just how long he had been out here.

When the first ray of dawn came, Jason was standing inside an alley, his gloves soaked with blood, a nasty pimp in his hold, slumping on the ground before him and no longer acting as nasty as he had been to his workwoman awhile ago, but in truth unconscious and half-dead.

Everything in his view brightened under the sunlight, and yet, nothing he saw seemed to have any difference.

He stared at the guy in his hand, keenly aware of just how much he wanted to keep beating him and beating him and beating him some more; he had done him a lot of damages already, but it wasn’t **_enough._** ( _“--It’s not enough,”_ he said to Bruce, clearly and sternly, standing across the man with the clown secured in his hands. He was ready to put him down, he had all the chances to put him down a thousand times already; but he had been delaying it because he didn’t just want to put a bullet in the Joker’s head. He wanted Bruce to stand there and watch as he did so. _“--You tried locking him away, once and again. And still, everything is exactly the same. It’s time you admit the truth, old man—sometimes your way just isn’t enough to cut it.”_ )

In a moment, as the sun set fully in the sky, Jason loosened his hold of the injured man, exited the alley and slowly began to turn home.

He could feel that the gnawing under his skin remained with him, and so did the deafening voices he could not hear but only felt, and the void, made by the absence of the part of him that had been lost inside the virtual reality in the sacred city of 'Eth Alth'eban—It was swelling and soring within him at all time, like a chronic inflammation.

He understood why Roy would be so worried and wanted him to go see a doctor. The redhead was right, the recent event did shake up him badly, triggering all of his dark feelings, and picking open each one of his old wounds while the new bunch was still dripping blood and quite hurt like a son of a bitch.

He might not always be his best self when he was with Roy and Kori, but he definitely hadn’t been this worst. _“--What happened to him has irrevocable consequences,”_ he could remember Kori saying that in the reality inside his mind, just as clearly as it was only yesterday.

Awhile later, he was back to the safe house, both physically and mentally exhausted, and wanted to just flop headlong into sleep with the small hope that now the sun was up, its light might help keeping the darkness away from his dream.

Held up a hand to the access control panel on the entry, he entered the password.

After the door had turned unlocked in a beep and slid before him, he was surprised to find that the house was quiet.

The light was on, but there’s no sound coming from the inside.

“Roy?” he called out while walking past the door, “--Kori?” There’s no reply.

He was just beginning to wonder if the two of them had gone out together when he found them in the living room.

Roy and Kori were lying still on the floor, just a few steps away from each other, with their fleshes torn and some of their bones stuck out. Their red hair—not quite identical with the other’s in shade, but both had the similar golden hue of the rise and fall of the sun—was now soaked with blood and had been painted blood red.

Paralyzed by the horror before him, Jason did nothing but stand staring out numbly at the front for a moment, with his hair curled and his blood curded in instinctual fear, while his brain was out blank and unable to register the fright he was experiencing.

Some moments later, he shook himself up with a hissing intake of breath, then moved forward with a stagger.

He came to Kori first, crouched down beside her and reached out a shaky hand to check for her pulse, regardless of the fact that he knew from his instinct that there’s little chance he could find one.

Her skin was cold, and just as he had feared, there was no sign of life underneath. Pinching his burning eyes shut, he swallowed down the sob in his throat.

In a moment, he reopened his eyes and moved up once more.

At Roy’s side, he knelt down on a knee, a hand holding out and hovering shortly over the man’s face, which was just as horribly battered as Kori’s. He did not dare to touch it, but he did manage to get himself to reach down and check for a pulse.

His hand clenched, digging its fingers deeply into the cold skin as he had failed to find any sign of miracle in it.

_The worst part was supposed to be **over** —_

He flopped down his forehead against Roy’s chest. The somber silence in the house was stirred by his convulsive sobs. The question of _who did it_ didn’t even come to his mind. The grief he was stricken with was too great, too far beyond control; at the moment, he was unable to work his mind through it and ask anything of himself but “ _how come something like this still happened after **every-fucking-thing**_ ”.

It wasn’t until a few moments later did the striking grief—the wild unfocused energy inside him—converted into a great heat.

Knowing clearly that he must find out who did this, Jason forced his eyes open and raised his head. And for the first time since he had stepped foot into the living room, he began to really _look_ at the direful picture before him ( _“--Look carefully,”_ Bruce had told him, when he had brought him out to investigate a crime scene for the first time. _“What do you think happened in here?”_ )—Instead of an instant hit, the state of the bodies suggested that both Roy or Kori had died from severe and multiple blunt traumas. They were beaten to death, but how? How could the killer have gotten in to the house that was supposed to be safety guarded, and caught Kori and Roy at the same time and made the Tamaranean princess and a trained combatant like Roy so defenseless that they would be battered slowly to death?

Nothing he was seeing made any sense, he reckoned.

Then he burst into a gale of laughter.

“Of course,” Jason laughed to himself, standing up slowly and wiping a hand over his wet face, and unwittingly smeared his face with the blood he had picked up from touching his friends’ “bodies”.

He could see it now, the senselessness in this picture, and the pattern inside this senselessness.

The senselessness of agony, of tragedies. It was just how the _machine_ operated. It let him _think_ he had escaped--just like the great many times it had let him escape and return to the paradise island with an imaginary controlling chip in his head, the time it had let him run out of the castle only to see his friends being slain before him. It let him run and run and run, for he would always run and run and run, always chasing down the sweet taste of hope around and around inside a maze with no exit—It allow him the comfort of safety, and hence the rise of his hope, just so it could _grind it into dust_.

None of this—none of this before him had any meaning. None of this was real, it was all just a part of the program. His battle against the Untitled had never happened, nor had his battle against Ra’s; he had thought he had woken up and he had escaped the city and it was all over, but no—no he was still locked inside the city, still lying immobilized on the surgical bed, still fully connected to the machine and having it latched onto his consciousness. They didn’t wake him up and let him walk away--No, no no no, they’re not done with him yet.

Jason pulled out one of his guns, but instead of moving it to his head, he turned to stare at it for a moment. _“--How many more times do you need to run into the dead end again until you spare yourself all this grief and heartache?”_ he could hear Talia asking in her soft, pitiful voice; only when he looked around, he couldn’t find her. The voice he heard was just an echo of his own memory.

It would seem that this time, he was left truly alone.

A sense of bleakness fell upon him as he stood alone before his friends’ fabricated bodies in the fabrication of their safe house. The irony in this did not escape him, and he had gotten so tired from all this unceasing mind torturing, he couldn’t help but think that if he really should just give up and let his torturers win.

The loop would not be broken, no matter what he did. He could have done what he had been doing all these times and terminated the program in his own term, feeling like he was still in control of at least one thing, but the control he had was a joke; soon he was just going to wake up again, back to the same hell, to the same old suffering.

Eyes fixating on the direction of the corpses, he pondered briefly if he threw himself down on his knees, and begged and wept loudly to whoever out there that was currently watching and pledged to forever be their faithful servant, would they have in truth showed him mercy and put an end to his misery.

Shortly after, when he had decided he would still rather have their blood than their mercy, he brought the gun up to his head.

However, this time he couldn’t seem to be able to get himself to pull the trigger.

Lowering the gun from his head, Jason turned to stare at it with confusion. “—Survival instinct, man,” a male voice explained to him from behind.

Startled by the unexpected voice, Jason swept around in a swish, and all he saw was a flash of grey.

A blunt instrument crashed into Jason’s face, knocking him down on his side. The voice, now was coming from before him and up high, carried on with perfect ease, “—This is no joke. You know what’ll _really_ happen if you pull that trigger. And you don’t really want _that--_ I mean, the nothingness is nice and all, but only quitter will seek comfort in death.”

Given he was too busy lying reclined on the ground and feeling stunned and disoriented, he didn’t come to hear what the voice was actually saying. The instant pain and dizziness made his eyes blur, and everything around him seemed to have grown excessively darkened. For a moment, Jason could see nothing, but he didn’t really need to see to identify his attacker. He could easily tell the taste of a _crowbar_ when he was given some.

The Joker. He clenched his teeth in an upsurge of rage. How come he would be so _blind_ , so ** _goddamn stupid_** _,_ that he didn’t see him coming—He had dropped his guard down and now he had caught him—After all this times, he still managed to catch him, just as easily as he did him the first time, and the **_second_** time—

“Yeah, the second time,” the voice echoed with a cold sneer. “How come there’d be a second time.”

The sneering voice penetrated his clouded mind; its sharp edge prickled him, and all of a sudden, Jason came to realize something he had failed to notice in his initial delirium.

There’s something wrong, something missing--that terrible, sickening gooeyness in the Joker’s voice—he could hear none from his attacker’s.

Unlike the voice of the Joker, the male voice here was clearer, and sharper, with a crisp distinctive ring Jason could remember hearing everyday in his life, whenever did he open his own mouth and speak.

The corpses of Roy and Kori had disappeared without him noticing, and so had the entire construction of the safe house. He was now, in fact, lying in a pool of thick murky water in a vast empty gloom. There’re streams of pale light, not of the sun or the moon or any seeable sources, coming down from above, creating a lone stage in the dark for Jason and his co-star.

The gun was still in his hand. Twisting around swiftly from his side to his front, Jason pointed his gun to the presence before him. “-- _Now_ I can see this isn’t real,” he stated with cold irony.

“Yeah well, does _this_ feel real?” the presence replied nonchalantly, and swung at Jason once more with the crowbar.

The strike came faster than Jason could actually do anything with his gun, which he had just held up for posturing purpose mostly, since he was quite certain that it was powerless against the construct of _magic_.

Once again, he flopped down on his side. A foot stamped down on the back of his hand, which seemed to have its bones cracked in an instant. A low cry of pain escaped Jason’s mouth. His gun fell and disappeared into a pool of dark water; at the same time, the heavy foot rose from his broken hand and turned to give him a kick in the face, sending Jason’s back on the wet ground in a splash.

Another swing of the crowbar caught Jason in his stomach.

“Or _this,_ ” the presence persisted, and so did his crowbar. “—Or how about _this,_ ” and so they went. “--This feel real enough for you?”

In a moment, when the crowbar-wielder was finally done making his point, Jason coughed and slowly moved up once more, propping his good hand on the wet ground, while his broken one drooping over his lap, its fingers shook and sent a great streak of pain through him as he attempted to flex its knuckles. Surely, it _felt_ real, but it couldn’t be any truer than all that he had been through in the virtual reality.

Certain that the fractures in his hand were merely a mind trick, he worked once again to move his broken hand into a fist.

His fingers twitched presently and was about to obey his command, but then the crowbar waved up relentlessly and bashed him hard in the jaw, shattering his efforts and his attempt to concentrate on waking up his senses and directing them back to the reality--the very true one where he had just defeated the Untitled and fought away Ra’s a moment ago, before the dark water in the Well of Sin had arisen and pulled him down into its depths.

After he had recovered from the vicious blow, he crawled up on the elbow of his good hand, spat out a mouthful of blood and muttered gravely, “The next time anyone asks me to go out and save this _fucking world,_ I’m gonna make it very specific that I would only receive a statue of myself or a blank check as payment, because this sucks.”

“Since when life doesn’t suck,” replied the magical construct in Jason’s shape. His Red Hood suit wasn’t quite the same as the one Jason himself was currently wearing, but an older version of it. Since he didn’t put on the helmet but only the red domino, Jason could hear his voice clearly and see his expression clearly.

In the twilight before Jason’s eyes, he stood regarding Jason mockingly through the white lenses of the red domino. “You think your life is going to stop being suck just because you’re now—what? A _better_ person?--A **_redeemed hero_**?”

As the doppelganger spoke, his crowbar swung back and forth absently before Jason. “--You really think that since now you’ve redeemed yourself, fallen back under Batman’s eternal glory and have his laws _**ruled**_ you again, then as a loyal subject to his laws, you should be protected forever from all atrocities and never have to have the world shit upon you again and be provided with nothing but _peace_ and _love_ and _security_ in your future?”

His sneering lips broke into an enormous grin. “—What are you on, buddy? I thought we’ve _sworn_ we’ll never do drugs given what happened to _Mom_.”

In spite of the fact that he should’ve just ignored everything his doppelganger said and concentrated on finding his way back to the real world, he couldn’t help himself from being irritated and gritting indignantly, “No one _rules_ me with their laws. _I am_ my own laws.”

It wasn’t until the words came out and was received a peal of laughter in response did Jason realize how stupid he might have sounded.

“At least you’ve still got your sense of humor,” remarked the Red Hood with the crowbar, still wearing an easy grin on his face and laughing derisively at the moment.

Then next, the laughter was cut off. His grin shrank back into a frigid sneer.

“There’s no more your _own_ law, not since the moment the old man had reached out to you and offered you a _second chance_ , and you jumped right at it.”

Without a trace of the previous mirth on his face, he enunciated, voice crispy and eyes a pair of cold white voids, “You just keep telling yourself that you’re still the same you, that nothing have really changed and you didn’t give up anything that is truly important for your reinstatement of membership. But you did and everything have changed. Once you’ve put his brand back on your own uniform, you’re bound by his laws, and you have as much liberty and independency as a little boy sidekick in the green panties--All this little ‘outlawing’ you’re still doing is no longer your way of life, but an act he allowed you to keep up. You haven’t done one single thing that is truly beyond his permission for a long time --because deep down, you know as clearly as I do, that if you ever dare to violate his law again, you’ll no longer be deemed as a ‘returned son’, but once again, a **_criminal_**.”

Although he was the splitting image of Jason, he seemed to be somehow taller standing before him in the pale twilight in the gloom, and mightier holding the crowbar.

“Just face it, man. There’re no more your own laws, your own rules. No more your own choices. You’re no longer in control of anything in your own life, because you’re barely even your own person in these days.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jason countered hurriedly, in a rasping voice that didn’t sound quite as steady as he tried to make it, but in fact just as doubtful and distraught as he began to feel.

With his teeth clenched slightly, he forced the roused disturbances away from his head, and turned to pull himself up from the pool of dark water he had been sitting in. The bent end of the crowbar thrust roughly against his chest, shoving him back down into the pool at once. “--What _is_ bullshit,” returned the mirror image of Jason sharply, his firm hand persisting in pushing the crowbar against Jason’s chest, pinning him down on the spot with its quickening pressure. “—is getting so _crazy_ for a _fantasy_ , that you had actually convinced yourself all you did in the past is _wrong_ , and that you must change, and discarded all things that had sustained you all along through all hells--things that had _driven_ you, had _powered you up_ and _kept you going_ for all these times--and confining yourself once again to the same broken laws that had _failed_ you, had even _incriminated_ you for simply seeking _justice--_ ”

The bent end of the crowbar dug deeper and deeper into Jason’s chest, as the presence in his shape—no longer all calm and wearing his insouciant sneer—learned forward his lofty body to Jason and pressed closer and closer over him with the crowbar standing up between them supporting his heavy weight.

His stern, resonant voice grew more and more thunderous at each interval between sentences. “— _What **is** bullshit,_” he was practically growling at this point. The increased pressure on Jason’s chest made his breastbone crack. He let out a chocked groan, feeling impossible to breathe. “--Is being so _fucking_ stupid that you had mistaken **_redemption_** as your true mean of **_salvation_**.”

On a sudden, the crowbar lifted its bend end from Jason, and it was moving so fast, Jason could barely take note of the removal of pressure and feel any relieve about it, before it caught him right in the face with a vicious swing.

A clear _clank_  rang through the twilight, then a dull _thud_ followed.

As he laid curled up on the wet ground with his head bled and his ear humming horribly from the impact, the Red Hood with the crowbar was snarling at him madly from above, “--How is this for **_salvation_** _?_ This taste like _salvation_ to you?” His strong arms were moving back and forth all the while to rain continuous strike on Jason with the cold blunt instrument, which Jason managed to catch a few moments later with his own hand—the formerly broken one that had been restored fully as his mind had set aflame by the ceaseless attack and could no longer perceive the hallucinating pain and bone fractures.

Roaring, he hurled up onto his own feet, hand grasping the shaft of the crowbar tightly, trying to yank it out of the doppelganger so he could turn the table around and smash him with it. His adversary, who seemed to be in deed stronger and faster than him in this vast darkness, bent his own arm and slammed Jason’s face with his elbow, knocking him back into a pool of dark water.

As Jason struggled to get back up, the doppelganger began again in a grave voice.

“All that you did—throwing yourself under the reign of a law you had long since lost faith in, and stifling yourself and grinding yourself down to fit into someone else’s standard—it was all for a new and improved life,” he remarked with a snort, eyes staring down contemptuously at Jason. “Now tell me, man, just exactly how ‘new and improved’ do you feel about all this? Dose it seem like your life is _improving?_ ”

At that, came the crowbar, lying Jason back on the ground with a forceful bash on his head, just before he could successfully crawl up.

“--Having yourself tied up and mentally tortured for weeks? And now coming down here, _to this?_ ” the rhetorical question was followed by another **_bash_** , “—just getting beaten,” **_bash_** , “and beaten,” **_bash_** , “and beaten?“ **_bash_**.

As the crowbar finally came to a stop and turned to stand on the ground, Jason tried to prop himself up on his shaky hands, which quickly slipped on a pool mixed of the dark water and his own spilled blood, and so he flopped down on his face in a thud.

“Dose any of this make you feel like that your life is getting _better?_ ” asked the Red Hood with the crowbar from above him. “--Or how about that time when the Joker captured you again, that felt like an _improvement_ to you?”

The reminder of what had happened in Gotham awhile ago carved though the depth of Jason. His entire body tensed in an instant. Seemed to have noticed that, that cruel, ruthless mirror image of himself let out a scornful snort.

“You’re so soaked up in building up this new life of yours, where you could just leave everything behind and move on and revel in luxuries like family unity and friendship and love--you didn’t even see him coming, did you?” drawled the cold and sneering voice that sounded exactly like Jason’s own. “--You lost your edges, dropped your guard down and opened yourself up as a target. You set your mind on _living_ a new life, and as a result, you forgot everything about _surviving_. And that laughing lunatic got to you again. And that’s horrible, isn’t it?--To have him _diminished_ you, and made a fool out of you and treated you like you’re nothing but an easy piece of tool he could just pick up and use it in his play with Batman again--as if you’ve learnt nothing, and haven’t grown up one _fucking_ bit since the day he had **_murdered_** you.”

A low growl of irritation flew off Jason’s mouth. He clinched his eyes shut and pressed his forehead against the cold wet ground, trying desperately to shut out the speaking voice and maintained his focus, which had been slipping away second by second in the darkness of the pit.

He needed to stop listening to that damn voice and get up and find his way out quickly. The beating wasn’t real, nor was this distorted, ill-shaped reflection of himself. He needed to remember that, needed to remember that it was all just the Well of Sin’s magic—He had thought the Well had wanted to kill him but that was just a part of its trick, it never wanted his death, it wanted something worse. It wanted to get inside him, that’s why it had set him up on that stage with Roy and Kori—His sense of pain had gotten very much numbed after all those mind tortures, and it wanted to wake it, so it had built up his forlorn hope in which he could return home with his friends once everything here was over, then tearing it down completely, shattering him along the way and making him so utterly shaken and overruled by renewed pain, that it could just easily break inside him and he wouldn’t be able to fight it off.

But he must fight it off somehow. With his grasp of reality slipping away and his senses sinking deeper and deeper into a violent whirl at each word and strike, he had started to have trouble to think, but still, he remembered—that the Well of Sin was a force of chaos and darkness, it was what had created the Untitled in the first place, and once that it had gotten inside him, he would certainly be corrupted and turned into something that was just as dangerous and irredeemable as the Untitled—It could not happen, he needed to fight back. He needed to _remember_ —

He remembered, quite perfectly, that how he had been gnawed day and night ever since he had been captured by the Joker and been at his mercy for the _second_ time in his life.

He had tried--he really did--but he just couldn’t get the event he and the others had gone through in Gotham out of his head. How badly it had plagued him—how horribly he had been burnt by all that searing sensation it had evoked in his heart, he remembered all that. He remembered how there had been a constant voice crying inside him, asking him over and over, “ ** _How come?_** ”

How come something like that still happened--How come he hadn’t been able to see him coming. How come the Joker could still get to him and overcome him and hurt him and the others like that.

How come he still regarded him with such utter ease and casualness, as if he was still just that same weak powerless little teenager who was nothing but his access to Bruce.

It was merely a few years ago that Jason had captured the clown and seized his life in his own hand; the sheer power he had had over him, he could still remember it--could still remember that, unlike what he had seen in his dream, where he was always a little teenage boy and the monster would always laugh and laugh and laugh all the while he chased him down and ran him over eventually, before he began to smash him into a mass of blood—when he had stood holding a crowbar in his own hand before the beaten clown, he had found that the abomination looked nothing like a mystic creature with infinite might, but just a squirming, laughing bag of sickness that could only be dealt with through full removal and could be removed very easily by his own steady hands.

Jason didn’t remove him though. His life had been saved by Bruce’s laws, just like it always had been. And he didn’t went on search for the clown again, too shaken, too devastated by the fact that Bruce would’ve in truth rather kept the cancer and let it continued wrecking him and everybody else--that he would really rather choose his own laws than his own _family_ , than what's best for the entire world.

He had moved on then, thinking that if Bruce would rather die and let everyone suffer than compromise his own sense of self, then he could just deal with the consequence of his own choice all by himself, and he would take no part of that, because he would be no part of his _fucked-up_ laws.

Except, once again, he was a part of that. And when he had gotten his heath fully restored in the manor after his safe return to it, he had spend a moment standing in his old room before he took leave, with his eyes staring down into the well-contained courtyard where everything had seemed so bright and peaceful under the sunlight as if nothing horrible had truly happened, and once again, he couldn’t help but ponder to himself, that just how many more times each one of them would still have to suffer from a disease like the Joker, until someone would finally step up and clear the world of all these diseases like him and made this world into a _safe place_ (--Then a moment later, he had turned around, put on his helmet unbeknownst of the fact that it had been infused with hidden poison, and there he had started to laugh and laugh and laugh).

The Red Hood with the crowbar was saying, “You ran away from yourself—from me, to chase this ‘new and improved’ version of reality of yours. And look what it got you.”

A hand reached out and yanked Jason’s head up from the ground. The reflection of himself was crouching at his side, forcing Jason to look up, so they could meet each other face to face.

“How are you enjoying yourself right now?” asked the doppelganger.

“At least I’m not you,” he heaved out a weak, bleak mutter in response, still striving to keep his senses. “—A broken madman who is always so damn _mad_ about every-fucking-thing, that he cares about _nothing_.”

The doppelganger stared at him gravely for a moment, before breaking into a biting sneer.

“We’re living in a world that has insanity written all over it and is determined to break everyone and drive everyone mad,” returned the doppelganger in a smooth tone.

Giving Jason an ironic look, he said, “You wanna know the real difference between us? I know who I am, man--I’m the person who have the power to avenge himself, who had faced his own murderer head on, had seized his pitiful life in his own hands and could crush it as his please. I’m the person who is actually in control of things _,_ including the underworld of Gotham. The crime rate of that ditch had dropped to its lowest because I had stepped in--I used to run and do my hardest to survive from all the terrors on the streets, now _I’m_ their terror. I know what I’m doing. I have the control of my own damn life. I make sure everyone who needs to pay for what they’ve done _pays_ just the right price. I don’t answer to anyone but myself, and I certainly don’t let the laws confine me—especially not some glorified law that is made to protect only the super-egos of its followers and fuck everyone else and everything else. I do what I want and I get what I want and I fucking _love it._ ”

With a contemptuous look on his face, he shook his head slightly and snorted at Jason. “—That’s who I am. Who the fuck are you?”

The hand that had been grasping on the back of Jason’s head flew away. He slumped down dumbly in a pool of dark water, and before he could think of anything—just any solid line of reasons he could use to make a counter-argument, the Red Hood with the crowbar stood up, looking all tall and almighty before Jason once more with all his stone-hard assertiveness.

Staring down thoughtfully at Jason for a moment, he then started again in a milder manner.

“I get why you would just want to drop everything and threw yourself into a dream,” he spoke in a sympathetic tone. “You be yourself and everyone hates it. You grew sick of having everyone look at you like you’re the villain, you got tried and lonely and you wanted some rest--trust me, I get that. And I know it’s nice, feeling like everything is finally being fixed, like you’re just as valid as the others, and having people who would stick their necks out for you, and even love you, and die for you--But surely, they will die, one way or another—either with dignity like Damian did, if they got lucky; or just as miserably as Mom and Dad and us. You’ve seen enough of that, you know it’s bound to happen. Bad things are always going to happen--This world really is just as fucked up as we remember it, and it won’t change its way just because you’ve tried to change yours. It is always going to be a place full of sickness and craziness and strikes and cruelty and horrors, there’s no way you can truly rest with all the monsters and disasters just lurking around the corner, waiting to tear you and everything around you apart.”

His voice rang clearly upon Jason. “Running away and hiding behind a fantasy won’t help keep you safe. Only I can—I mean, look at yourself, man, you’re weak without me. Even Talia and the League know you couldn’t get shit done being like this, they had to give you some mind conditioning just to get you fixed.”

“Fuck them,” replied Jason instinctually in a dull mumbling voice. A streak of blood brimmed over the corner of his mouth while he spoke. “--And fuck you too.”

The doppelganger stared at him with a set face.

Then in a moment, he sighed. “I was just trying to help, man,” he said, raising the crowbar in his hand. “—I don’t even know why I bother. Dad really was right about you, you know. You _are_ a useless piece of shit.”

With that, fell again the crowbar.

Only this time, Jason flung himself up with a roar, catching the crowbar before it caught him. The churning anger inside him had burst into a full breaking of wrath. All the former pains in his body seemed to have evaporated in an instant, along with the sick heaviness in his limbs and his mind.

With revived strength and swiftness, Jason wrenched the crowbar away from his adversary’s hand and pounced ferociously upon him.

The doppelganger fell into a pool and splashed the dark water. Without thinking, Jason swung up the crowbar and bashed it down against him, then he bashed him again and again and again and again and dozens more.

When he had finally finished, the presence in his shape was no longer in any recognizable shape, but was now a great lump of blood and torn skin before Jason’s eyes.

Slowly and quietly, he slumped down on the wet ground at the doppelganger’s side, and put down the crowbar next to himself, feeling utterly hollowed out after the ferment.

The blood in the doppelganger’s mouth bubbled as he struggled to work his tongue and speak. His voice was so horribly muffled, it sounded like he was speaking to Jason from deep underwater; but still, Jason could understand him perfectly.

“I knew you would get yourself back,” which was said with a low, throaty chuckle.

Jason turned his eyes towards him. He rolled his broken head to the side and met Jason’s eyes with a pleased smile. “--This is way better, isn’t it? Just let loose, and let yourself be your perfectly powerful self.”

Staring at him for a moment, Jason heaved out a gruff chuckle. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah I do feel better.”

“Beautiful,” remarked the bleeding, fully fractured, magical mirror image of Jason, before his body melted all of a sudden into a writhing serpent of dark matter that was just as intensely black as the darkness itself.

The same panic fear that had visited Jason earlier returned to him, as he saw the serpent slither swiftly to his way.

It climbed upon him, and at first, he was trying to do what he had done the first time it had tried this and struggle away; but then it drew up all the dark water on the ground and formed together with it into a big cluster of blackness, and it covered Jason up and filled him with its sweet dark dew--And from inside and out, he could feel its striking sweetness, its ruling touch--its great, formidable _**power**_ \--and he could no longer fight it.

Its power was _exactly_ what he needed to survive this world and all of its unceasing attacks.

The other him was right, it was stupid to seek redemption in a world that had little salvation. He didn’t need to reform himself and make peace with this world. The world was a sick and cruel place that knew no peace. He just needed to stay strong. He needed to be powerful. So powerful that he could even take the world on and make it know his rage.

And so, he opened himself up, and let in every bit of the powerful arcane magic in the Well of Sin.

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Not expecting him to still have the strength to struggle, the woman was caught by surprise; the forceful bump against her jaw caused her to loosen her grip and stumble backward.

Roy hastened forward before Cheshire could do anything more than grunting in pain and irritation.

“I dunno how badly you’re brainwashed--” he started hastily in a slurring voice, trying to say as much as he could before he was forced away. He wasn’t sure if the guy could still hear him, if whatever the League had done to him had prevented him from recognizing his friends and how much they meant to him and he to them. The fact that Jason would have in truth decided to go with a group of vicious killers who had abducted him and turn away from his own friends had made it clear that there’s something horribly wrong; nevertheless, Roy needed him to know that he wasn’t giving up yet, and thus Jason wouldn’t need to go through anything alone.

The interruption seemed to have annoyed Jason at first. A hand of his moved up, catching the one hand Roy had on his arm and pulling it away. Then their eyes locked and he stopped short.

As Roy continued his speech, the man stood transfixed before him, hand hanging in the narrow between them with Roy’s wrist in its hold. While he had the Red Hood suit on, his face was naked with neither his red helmet nor the domino; and at this distance, Roy could see everything, every detail, every changes upon his face, including the sudden looming emergence of astonishment and uncertainty, and how they had disrupted the tough layer on Jason’s face and brought out a look that Roy could remember to the surface.

There’re times when things had gotten excessively stressful, the guy would have those sort of nightmares that would make him tossing and turning rabidly and grunting like a wounded animal in his sleep, and once Roy had woken him up, he would stare at Roy briefly with glassy eyes, scarcely awake and couldn’t really tell whether or not the nightmares he had been experiencing was all over.

Roy had always admired the way Jason handled himself, the way he could keep himself moving, scrabbling and crawling if he had to--the way he had never called it quit, even after all that he had been through. The way he seemed to be able to survive from great many things, even death, even life--it wasn’t something Roy thought himself could do (--Day by day he was breaking down; it was only a moment after he had started the fight with Killer Croc and his crew that he realized there’s little chance he could come out of it alive. He should’ve retreated so he could live to fight another day. But he couldn’t bring himself to retreat because he couldn’t bring himself to go on any longer, not alone, not without _it_ \--the reason to live, the reason of why he got to live while someone else didn’t—He had thought _the suit_ was it. But it turned out, he was never worthy of the suit. The junk and the booze helped, as well as the fights, but they weren’t enough for him to fully escape the **_losses_** , of a sense of belonging, of validation, of friends he would sometimes see in his dreams but couldn’t quite remember he had ever made, of a being in his life that not once he had met but always knew of its existence from the depths of his soul, so small yet so big that could fill up the vast void inside him just as easily as it could unmake him with _a crash—_ Whatever greater power that had created him in the first place must have messed up big with his construction; it always seemed like there’s something wrong with him, always seemed like there’re some pieces of him _missing_. But it wouldn’t matter whether or not he was defective, not in death anyway)—It wasn’t until the first time when he had seen Jason waking up from a nightmare, looking all young and vulnerable with all of his usual armors momentarily disappeared, did he realize that, although the guy could survive a lot of things being on his own, he needed someone by his side just as much as Roy did.

Somehow, the look on Jason’s face had triggered something inside him. He didn’t know where the reaction came from, since he could not recall ever doing that for anyone; but before he knew it, he had pulled Jason in and put his arms around him, letting his face rest upon his shoulder and telling him “ _it’s okay. It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay_ ” in a voice so quiet and soft, that a moment later, after Jason’s fight or flight instinct had finally kicked in and turned to pull away from him, he had regarded Roy dryly, and asked if he had a baby stashed in somewhere because he was talking to him like someone who had spent a lot of time nursing a little child. (--The careless remark brought inside him a faint strange pang. Roy chased it away and also his own perplexity, and turned to crack a joke in response. He didn’t know why he would do that. Why it had felt so natural for him to calm Jason down the way he did. It’s not like he had ever rushed in when someone crying out from a nightmare and pulled them into a hug and spoke softly to sooth them until they calmed down--Never once in his life had he done any of that, _had he?_ )

“--I _will_ get you out of here, Jason, I promise—I’ll…I’ll figure out something in a snap,” he said to Jason stoutly, knowing it through the flickering glint in his eyes that a part of him—the _real_ him—was still in there and could hear him. “So you just—you just stay alive and wait for me, Jaybird. You just…you just don’t die, okay?”

A shade of emotions passed Jason’s face. For a moment, it almost seemed like he was going to change his mind about locking Roy and Kori away and let them stay and help him any way they could. Then on a sudden, the pressure on Roy’s wrist was gone.

Drooping his hands at his sides, Jason replied to Roy simply and turned away, leaving Roy on the spot with his hand falling down limply into the growing space between them.

Instead of the vague sting of disappointment he usually felt, the sight of Jason drawing away this time had brought a chill upon him. Instantly, he tried to reach out and catch the guy before he went fully out of his reach; but Cheshire--who was still wearing the hat she had stolen from him, much to his annoyance--seized him by his nape, holding him fast in a grip that seemed to be a bit too strong to belong to someone without super strength, and drawing the poisonous nails of her spare hand through the sword wound Shiva had previously left on Roy’s back.

Roy grunted in pain as her nails craved through his open wound, and then the sedative she had injected him kicked in and at once the pain was gone. His head became so drowsy, he almost passed out on his feet.

“If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the dungeon trying out my new scratching post,” said Cheshire to her colleagues in an ominous voice.

“Sounds sexy,” Roy remarked in a mumble, struggling to keep himself awake. “But instead of doing the dungeon thing, how about you just...you know, don’t? I thought you said something about giving me a lift home before, that sounds nice. We can do that. You can just…hey, just give me your hand so I can enter the coordinates into that teleportation device of yours.”

“And let you beam me away again? I’ll pass,” snorted Cheshire coldly.

Merely a few steps off, Roy saw that Kori, who had gotten her hands bound behind her back by an energy coil, was getting shepherded by Rictus upon her way to confinement also, and clearly couldn’t do anything more than Roy could at this moment to stop it.

Even with his eyes blurred from the sedative, he could see how much the fact she was going to be locked away had distressed her. He wanted to say something to Kori, wanted to properly apologize for ignoring her advice about the Untitled and apparently doing absolutely nothing so far except for making things worse.

Leaving him no chance to say anything, Cheshire enabled her teleportation device. In a blink of an eye, Roy was transferred from the city center into a holding cell. The instantaneous transition riled up his stomach, which had already been quite sick from the sedative drug. He hunched down immediately behind the iron bars and turned to puke.

Cheshire was watching him from outside the cell. “Damn you, Red,” she started dryly, “How am I supposed to have fun torturing you when you’re already looking so pathetic?”

He lifted his index finger in a way to signify her to give him another moment. Then he spat onto the ground one last time and straightened his back. “Why torture people when you could be friends with them,” he replied, feeling a lot more soberer after throwing up.

“You think I’d ever want to be friends with you?” She regarded him derisively. “After you messed with my teleporter and almost killed me, I don’t even think I like you anymore.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, I just wanted you out of my way. And you’ve tried to kill me every time you see me,” returned Roy.

Now that the effect of the sedative had subsided, he could feel clearly there’re aches in his body everywhere. The hot sting in his back was especially troubling, but not so much he couldn’t deal with, and the pain kept him awake, which was good, because if he fell asleep right now, it was almost certain that he wouldn’t be waking up until next week, and he couldn’t have that.

He looked up abruptly when a loud bombing thundered from the outside and stirred the roof of the dungeon.

Agitated, he shook his head, going up at the cell door in one stride and clutching his hands on the iron bars, trying to get as close as he could to the outside. “What’s happening out there.”

“--Is none of your business,” Cheshire replied. “You’re in timeout, remember?”

Roy gnashed his teeth. “I can’t stay in here.”

“It isn’t an option. You’re staying in here until further notice, and I’m staying here with you and make sure you can’t create any more troubles.”

He stared at her incredulously. “You’re not going to get back there and help?”

“From what I’ve heard, those immortal magicians you’ve brought into our home are capable of disrupting civilization and I don’t get well with magic,” replied Cheshire in a plain voice. “So no, Roy, I’m just going to stay put and babysit you and not get myself killed.”

“And your buddies are fine with that?”

“They know I’ll stick with them as long as there’re mutual benefits and protection,” she said. “The League and I work together and profit together. We win together, we don’t die together. And right now, they don’t need me to win, they just need your boyfriend.”

“He’s not—you know what, never mind.”

The sounds of battle out there drummed continuously all the while he and Cheshire were talking. He gazed out of the cell intently, hands gripping tightly at the iron bars that were keeping him away from helping Jason out with the battle he was currently facing--the battle Roy had started by stupidly letting the enemy play him like a tool.

Jason didn’t seem to think it was his screwed-up but he had screwed everything up. He was supposed to get the guy out of danger, and now he was stuck in a cell while the guy was putting his life out there trying to save the world. He could’ve _died_ out there. He couldn’t die like this. Roy couldn’t lose him like this. No, no how could he lose him like this when he never even got the chance to tell him--

“How does ten million dollars sound like,” he asked, after racking his brain for any way to get out of the cell.

At the moment, he had nothing on him that could be enough to take down the cell door; all of his heavy weapons were lost at the city center along with his trick arrows, and even if he did manage to take down the door, he still had to deal with Cheshire, who certainly would be even more difficult to deal with than a moment ago when he had had far less injuries as he had got now. It would be perfect if Cheshire could just do him a favor and free him, but there’s no chance she would do that, not without a price.

Cheshire stared at him blankly. “You can’t be serious.”

“C’mon, pretty cat, _ten million dollars_ \--I can give you this much _right now._ Just get me out there and it’ll go straight into your account. You can’t make a easier money than this,” he offered earnestly.

Back when Ollie had kicked him out, he had left him with nothing; it wasn’t until recently that the man had started to regret his decision and tried to mend things up between them. “-- _It’s what you deserve_ ,” was how the man had explained about the money for the sale of Roy’s stock of his company he had suddenly transferred to Roy one day. “ _So that’s how much I worth. Good to know,_ ” was how he had replied. Ollie had tried to say something more, but Roy was done listening then.

He wasn’t sure what the man had expected it would achieve, if he had thought by throwing a huge amount of money to his face was going to make him forget all the ugliness between them. He guessed ten million wasn’t a bad number for a person’s worth, and he did earn it with his contributions to Ollie’s company. But he just kind of wished someone would think of him better. (“-- _That’s a lot of zeroes in there. What are you gonna do with that?_ ” Jason asked after he had learnt about the stock money. Roy shrugged. Regarding him for a moment, the man drew slowly to him from the other side of the room. _“You could buy yourself something nice,”_ he suggested, _“or you can cash it all out, and we can build a burning man with the cash, bring it to Queen’s house and set it on fire.”_ Roy laughed at that. The corner of Jason’s mouth curled up into a wry smile. _“--Green Arrow can go find a dick as huge as he is and suck it,”_ he said, looking at Roy with the soft glint in his eyes that was perhaps the most enchanting thing he had ever seen. _“—The money is yours now, you can do whatever you want with it. But if you gonna let him or his money make you think you’re ever less than who you are, you’re not remotely as smart as I thought...idiot.”_ )

It had been awhile since he had received the money. Despite the fact that Ollie wouldn’t have known or cared what he did with the stock money, he had always kind of felt like if he used it to buy himself anything, it might give the man some sort of satisfaction. So he never did, not yet had he wanted something so bad that he felt like he should swallow his pride.

Except pride meant little to him right now when someone he cared was in grave danger, and if he needed to somehow rely on Ollie's endowment to get back to them, then so be it. It's just money anyway.

“I don't know what, but I think there’s something really wrong with you,” Cheshire said, after staring at Roy for a moment. “--Even if I do take the risk of getting into trouble with the League and get you out, what do you possibly think you can still do in there that would help?”

It didn’t matter how little he could do. “He could’ve died out there,” he said, voice husky with emotions. “If he’s gonna die out there, I can’t let him die alone. What’s the point of doing all this—learning and training our asses off to go out there and protect the world and save lives and everything—if we can’t even ** _be there_ **and **_do something_** , when someone we care is dying, all alone and is needing us?”

Somehow, his words seemed to have stirred her.

With a pensive look on her face, Cheshire lowered her head and stared down at the ground before herself. Then in a moment, she moved forward to the cell door.

Her hand lifted up, took off the stolen hat off her own head and gave it back to Roy from across the iron bars. “…You’re much more fun when you’re trying to kill me,” she said in a low voice, before she backed away from the cell door and turned to enable her teleportation device. “—Thing seems to be quiet down now, I think I’ll go out and take a look.”

Dropping the trucker hat on the ground outside the cell, Roy stretched out his hand through the iron bars, and called to Cheshire in haste, “Don’t you ever have someone you care or someone that cares about you? Wouldn’t you have done anything for them? Just do anything to _not lose them?_ —Have you even known _how it feels like to lose someone?_ ”

She paused for a beat.

“Why would I ever,” replied Cheshire, then her body was covered by a strong light and she zipped out of the dungeon in a flash.

Frustrated, Roy thudded his arm roughly against the iron bars, then started to pace about the cell in a moment and tried to rack up some plan to free himself.

There’s a pocket knife he kept in the inside of his combat boot; he tried to pick the lock of the cell door with it, but the lock, as to be expected, was ingenious and made of material so tough that he had to give up before he broke his knife against it.

He slumped down against the iron bars, hugging his head with his hands and feeling like he was losing his mind--Then on a sudden, a dazzle of light turned up and he found Cheshire standing in the cell before him.

Roy moved up quickly. “--Ten million dollars, you said?” Cheshire started, tossing a tablet onto Roy’s hand.

After wiring the money to the woman, he gave her back the tablet and asked, “Not that I’m not happy about this. But what made you change your mind? It can’t simply be because you have the hots for me.”

“I never get to make this much without getting myself a lot of sweat and a lot of fun. It'll be nice if I could do without the sweating for once,” returned Cheshire with little mind, then she turned to look at Roy with her face softened in a way that he found oddly familiar. “...I can’t recall I’ve ever lost someone, since no one I can think of is for me to lose, or I for them, but it sounds awful, losing someone important the way you said. So maybe I just don’t really want that for you.”

Taking a hold of Roy’s arm, she enabled the teleportation device. “—Or maybe it’s because I want the League of Assassins to be around for my own benefit, and seeing our ‘new boss’ has looked like he’s getting out of control and just killed one of us out there, I’m hoping you can do something to stop him before he destroys the entire League.”

Once he was dropped out of the teleportation portal, he faced around to Cheshire questioningly, but the woman was gone.

He was standing all by himself in the city center, and what he saw before him made his eyes wide with fright.

 

***

 

Just as sudden as it had befallen him, the shroud of darkness split, breaking down around him into a whirl of ashes.

The whirl died down presently. And as the black ashes vaporized in the air, Jason could see with his returned vision that he was back at where he’s supposed to be: the pit--several feet below the city surface with glimmer of light shredding down from above, its ground dry since the dark magic water it had formerly held had all emptied into Jason.

Like hundreds of millions of tadpoles, the streams of magic swam inside him, moving about his organ system with strong vivacity, striving to merge with every single one of his cells.

With pleasant curiosity, Jason lifted his hands, turning them up and down before his eyes and was intrigued to find that the dark streams inside him had such brilliant luster, he could see their drifting glow on the exposed part of his skin between his rolled up sleeves and his glove cuffs as they passed through underneath.

Dropping back his hands to his sides, he took a look around; the sword Ra’s had left earlier was lying next to his feet. Although he didn’t have any special feeling for swords, he couldn’t deny the beauty of it.

Thinking it would be a great waste to left behind a sword like that and let it rot in the pit, he reached down and picked it up. And the change of gravity had felt so natural, it wasn’t until then did he realize that his feet had never truly touched the ground, but were in truth lifted slightly above it by his new-gained magic.

Soon as the sword was in Jason’s hand, a stream of magic within him trickled from his skin swiftly, sprawling up from the sword’s grip to its edge until it was tinted fully with black and shining like it was made of obsidian.

It felt different holding this reformed sword than he was the All-Blades, and he loved just how it was feeling in his hand--As powerful as the All-Blades was, it was the legacy of the All-Caste, and it was made to restore peace and balance and rival only what was of magic and nothing more; while Jason knew from his depths that the black sword in his hand could take out whatever that stood in his way, whether they’re magical or not.

There had been a time when he had thought being Robin was the most magical thing that had ever happened to him, like the suit could somehow bestow him a transcendent power and as long as he was wearing it, he would be damn near invincible--Like most of the good times in his life, it didn’t last long, and now with real and powerful magic swimming about his depths and reinforcing him, he couldn’t help but think once more just how puerile and stupid he was, that he would’ve believed that the suit was enchanted and had in it any more power than an assemblage of Kevlar and electronic parts that was designed by men could ever hold.

Before he exited the pit with the sword, he saw that one of his guns was lying few steps off on the ground. He wasn’t sure whether he had dropped it at the beginning when he had fallen down here with Ra’s, or if it was the gun he had pulled out and lost quickly afterward during his previous drenching in the dark water.

It looked just like the gun he had put to his head, when he had been stricken with grief and defeat and going quite mad from a scorching want of just a little scraps of victory and a moment of freedom--so he guessed it was it.

Not caring for the way it looked and what it reminded him of, Jason left the gun on the dry ground, letting the air carry him up steadily through the mouth of the pit and back to the city surface.

The position of the sun above him evinced that it hadn’t been long since he had disappeared into the pit with the Demon’s Head.

Glancing up to the afternoon sun, he found it not quite as dazzling to his eyes as it was supposed to be, and it was glowing rather opalescent than sunny yellow in the clear sky.

Since the pit was dimly lighted with no color in its bowel apart from black and grey in various shades, he couldn’t tell until he was now back to the surface that the streams of murk swimming about him had also come to his eyes and coated them with a black veneer.

It didn’t seem to have impaired his vision; he could process all the information from everything within sight such as the shapes of objects and the spatial structure of his surrounding just as good as before, in fact, he felt like he could even see more than his eyes could formerly reach—Like if he just focused and figured out how to adjust his perception, he could even extend his field of vision further into every nooks of the sacred city and beyond; the only difference was that now his color vision was a bit off and thus everything he saw was slightly ashy as if they were captured through a grey-toned filter.

Whether the color deficiency was a permanent side effect of the Well of Sin’s power and it was how the Untitled had always been seeing with their jet black eyes, or if it was going to pass away after the assimilation of magic had fully completed, it was of little importance to Jason.

As he reappeared and landed his feet neatly at the side of the pit, the League, who had been waiting on the sideline in a neutral manner ever since Ra’s arrival, drew to his way presently with Ben on the lead.

“Seems like we have a winner,” remarked December Graystone reflectively, gaining a responding hum from Rictus, who had rejoined the group after locking Kori away into a cell and was walking alongside him.

“Where’s Ra’s?” asked Ben, after taking a glance inside the empty pit.

“Back to the hot place he crawled out of, I suppose,” Jason replied.

“Is he going to return?”

“Probably not for a time,” he said, “and if he is, I don’t see he’d be much of a problem now.”

Ben made no reply to that, only directed his eyes onto Jason and regarded him for a moment, clearly seeing the changes of his appearance and reckoned the meaning of it.

“How are you feeling,” Ben asked. There’s a bit of natural caution in his voice, but since he was confident that Jason was already on broad with them and therefore the more power he as their leader held the more powerful the League and this city would also become, he didn’t seem to be too concerned by Jason’s adoption of the raw magic from which the Untitled had been bred.

After a brief thought, Jason replied, “Better.”

Ben nodded simply in response, then turned once more towards the hollow on the ground. “What are we going to do with that?”

“I may have an idea,” he said in a thoughtful tone.

With the black sword drooping at his side, he glanced down at his spare hand, flexing and unflexing it briefly to get a hold of the energy swimming underneath. Then in a moment, he faced around to the pit, hand holding up and open.

A great swarm of energy came as Jason called upon it through a concentrated thought; his hand glowed and out from it went a ball of violent black light, which hovered shortly upon the Well of Sin and then descended completely into its bowel with a terrible thunder.

The mouth of the pit turned aflame with the black glow and cracked in an instant, bringing down around it a vast stretch of ground in a rapid speed and making everyone save for Jason who was floating a few inches above the sinking ground lurch and fall against one another.

Soon, the singular gap on the ground vanished into a major depression of the city surface; and the chanting of liberation from the dark forces inside Jason told him that he had succeeded in what the Untitled had failed.

As much as the dark water wished to be free, it was also deeply attached to its cradle. The Well of Sin would one day restore its grip upon the magic and claim it back as it had done from the Untitled earlier--But now the Well was destroyed, the power would be Jason’s for evermore.

“How about a little warning next time,” remarked Lady Shiva in a gruff voice, after she had regained her balance on the sunken ground.

Jason shrugged, still standing levelly in the air. “Heads up,” he held out his glowing hand and said, seizing the League all of a sudden with a pour of writhing black streams.

The attack was such a surprise to everyone, even Shiva, with her uncanny velocity of reflexes, was shocked and unable to move fast enough to escape the grip of the stretching streams.

While the rest of his group was getting wound up separately in the magic streams’ coils, Graystone, being a mage himself, managed to shift away and disappeared from Jason’s eyes.

In a moment, he turned up in the air behind Jason. Sensing a blow sweeping from behind him, Jason slid neatly off its orbit, then glided up in Graystone’s face with his black sword lifted.

The sword went deftly through Graystone’s stomach before he could come up with another magic attack. Eyes bulged in pain, the mage grew transfixed in the air, and fell down presently on the ground after Jason had twisted the sword and drawn it out of his body.

The dark, glossy blade of his sword drunk up the blood Graystone had left upon it quickly and quietly, and Jason knew from the small vibration it was sending to his hand that it was thirsty and wanted more. He calmed it down, however, for he wasn’t entirely sure just how many more kills he felt like doing today.

He hadn’t even planned to kill Graystone just then. He had simply wanted to round everyone up while he took a moment to think. The mage had brought the death to himself by putting up resistance and trying to attack him. Although Jason probably could take him down without killing him, he also couldn’t think of any reason why he should go easy on him.

Lowering the sword back to his side, he turned around once again to where the rest of the League had been held.

With most of the Man-Bat Commandos routed by the Untitled earlier, there’re only a small number of them left in the field at the moment, and none of which seemed they would be any help to the League.

The people were struggling strenuously against the streams. Placing his feet on the ground, Jason regarded them for a moment, wondering whatever he should do with them.

He had only been repelled by the idea of leading the League because he didn’t want to get involved again with these people and be reminded what kind of person he used to be--but now, his mind had changed and his eyes had gotten so clear, he had came to realize that, no matter how much he tried and pretended to be someone else, in the end of the day, he could only be what he always was, and he was quite good with that.

At the moment, he found himself really didn’t mind the idea of having this city as his stronghold and the League of Assassins in his command. It would be the most profitable to him and what he wished to do. But then again, there’re those irritating things such as the kidnapping and the imprisonment in the machine’s program, and although Jason had been willing to put them aside at the occurrence of crisis, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to just let them all go.

He didn’t know much about Rictus, but it seemed that Ben and Shiva would be essential for him to keep around if he was to take over, given their expertise and their supposedly thorough knowledge about the League and this city.

He was just pondering whether or not he could run things without those people, when he sensed something swooping down behind him with the swiftness of lightening.

A cold hand reached his back, thrusting through his skin presently like a ghost.

Quickly, he swept around, driving back whatever that was behind him with a furious swing of his arm, then lifted his black sword and drove it in full pursuit, notwithstanding the fact that he had already come to see who the person was behind him.

“I don’t wish to fight you,” started Essence in a low and anxious voice, dropping the one hand she had touched Jason with and lifting the sword in her other hand, meeting Jason’s swinging sword in a clink.

Jason replied with disapproval, “It kind of gave off an entirely different signal when you shove your hand into someone’s body without asking.”

“I’m trying to help you,” she said, standing across Jason at a small distance, lowering her sword at her side but not quite entirely dropping it down.

“Again, wrong signal.”

“We are not your enemy, Jason,” spoke another voice from above him in the air, “--So long as you don’t force us to be.”

Seeing the spirit of Ducra standing over his hand, he lifted the corner of his lips into a cold sneer. “Look who showed up.”

“I know you may feel as if I’ve forsaken you, but you must listen to me,” said the dead leader of the All-Caste sternly, “The power within you isn’t for you to hold. You must resist the temptation and allow Essence to rid you of it before the assimilation completed, for it did, you would be fully altered and bound with the magic of darkness for all eternities.”

“I think I’m okay with that,” he replied plainly.

Ducra shook her head. “I had faith in you, and I had wished you would be able to defend yourself against the darkness, but now I see you’ve already lost yourself to it,” she said in a disappointed tone, gesturing Essence to continue her mission. “--I’m aware of the hardship you have been through and I’m greatly sorry for everything that had happened to you, Jason, I truly am--But what must be done shall be done. And it would only be best for yourself should you not fight us.”

The girl with jet black eyes moved and strove to subdue Jason as she was bade. Despite the fact that their relationship hadn’t lasted long and it had been years since they had gone to their separate ways, Jason found himself still care for her and didn't want to fight her--but Essence not seemed to be giving him much choice.

As they were clinking their swords against one another’s, he spoke in a clear voice, “You don’t need to do this.”

“I have to,” replied Essence stoutly, without slowing down for a second. “The whole world would fall into disarray if I don’t.”

“This world is a bedlam from start to finish, but now with this power, I have a chance to really make a difference of it. The All-Caste sworn to maintain peace and order in this world--what they had ever succeeded and how they are now? You want what’s best for the world, then why don’t you come join me, help me learn how to use this power better.”

“This power could bring nothing but destruction to our world, and it must be buried in me. If you’re still yourself—if you’re still the one I remember, the one that I _loved_ \--then you’ll understand, Jason.”

A deft sweep from Essence’s sword pushed Jason off a few steps and left a cut on his upper arm.

Holding her sword firmly in her hand, she paused across Jason and said, staring out earnestly at him with flashing black eyes, “Just let me fulfill my duty, _please_ —the extraction won’t harm you if you don’t insist on fighting me on it.”

He could see it was true, that Essence didn’t wish him any harm; and he could also see that her mind was set and she would not rest until she finished her task.

After regarding Essence for a moment, he began softly, “I’m sorry it has to come to this.” Then he glided through the air in lightning velocity, moving the black sword and casting with it such ferocious strike that the woman could barely escape in one piece.

It was Essence’s choice to fulfill her duty as the daughter of the All-Caste; and it didn’t seem there’s anything Jason could say or do to change her mind about that. She had determined on taking away his magic, no matter the cost--just like how he had determined to retain it and have it reinforce him infinitely at all costs.

The dark blade drew a large cut on Essence’s shoulder and made her falter slightly. Though her shoulder did not bleed, there’s no doubt that the black sword had injured her.

Let out a pained grunt, she continued on combating with her own sword, and staggered backward with her sword knocked out of her hand in a moment.

Without hesitation--without _thinking_ \--Jason waved his black sword and went onto where his ignited instinct drove him.

The awareness of the fact that he had been playing on defense and pulling his punches these days had come to his mind now and then, but not until just a moment ago had he perceived the full weight of his decision of trying to do things in a different way—the same old way he had already tried once and grown properly disappointed of—and how it had been wearing him down gradually.

He had committed more killings during these last couple of weeks than he had done in the rest of the year in total, even though it had happened mostly in the virtual reality--And he had never thought about just how _natural_ it had felt, when he had slain someone in the fabrication of the castle. In his mind, he had only done it out of necessity, since he couldn’t escape without killing; so he didn’t pay it any mind, didn’t stop and take a moment to think, that how easy it was for him to do that, to kill someone in cold blood—to just handle things in the way he used to, the way he always preferred, and not wasting his time searching for “another way” without the guarantee there would be one and ignoring the fact that there’s a perfectly plain and simple and adequate solution to the problems.

How much easier a lot of things would be if he could just _stop holding back_ and do exactly what he saw fit. How **_liberating_** it was, if he could just be himself, regardless of how everyone thought—he didn’t come to realize that until he had fought against the Untitled with nothing in mind but the determination to win, until he had stopped trying to bury what inside him but let it run free, and swung the crowbar at the subject to his anger so many times with such unbridled force, so much so that every bone in the subject’s body had broken, his brains had leaked out from his smashed skull and there’s no way he would be alive if he was anything but a wraith from Jason’s past.

While Essence was stooping down in an attempt to pick up her lost sword, the black sword in Jason’s hand--wound with magic and therefore capable of slaying even an immortal sorceress--waved and stroke down mercilessly upon her.

It was the end of her, the first person Jason had been in love with—Or it would be if someone hadn’t darted up into the midst of them with a rasping, urgent cry of “-- ** _Jay_** ”.

The sword that was originally from Ra’s had had the sharpness and the hardness to cut a person in half even before it had been strengthened with magic, and it was slashing down with such horrible ferocity, that no one person standing in its way should come out of it in one piece.

Soon as the voice reached his ears and the faint color of red entered his eyes, he was at a loss for an instant.

Essence was bumped to the side. And there’s a hand holding out to Jason’s way, trying its best to reach him.

He tried to halt it, but the sword was striking down too fast and he had lost his control on it. All he could mange to do was bring the black sword slightly off its course, to minimize the damage.

A shout of extreme pain rang through his ears. Before him, the blood sprinkled, not in such a bright red but rather a maroon red in his jet black eyes.

Upon the ground, fell an human arm—cleaved clean off from its elbow.

While Jason was standing in a frigid stupor with the black sword hanging down at his side, eyes glaring out madly in front of himself, Essence picked herself up and moved behind him in a flash.

Seizing Jason with a hand on his shoulder, she held out her other hand, which was glowing black and deformed at once into a cold shade of shadow as it thrust swiftly through the skin of Jason’s back.

Nearby, the League slumped down one by one on the ground, as the black streams that had been holding them up loosened their grip and presently disappeared.

The hand of shadow was drawing away his magic from his depths, the awareness of which flared upon Jason’s whirling mind and stirred him wildly at once with its intense glare. It gripped him--the ruling, overpowering want to fight and preserve the dark strength—shoving down his jumbled thoughts and spurring his body to take action.

Rabidly, he shifted his strained eyes around--from the injured man and the severed arm on the ground to Essence--thinking and knowing nothing but how he must _stop her_ and _rout her out_.

Soon as he began to struggle, a horrible pain shot through his inside. “—If you fight now, you would only put your own life at risk,” somewhere in the sky, Ducra was exclaiming in a grave voice.

In spite of her warning and the increasing pain inside him, he continued twisting against Essence to get her off him, and he did not stop—not until a moment later, when Roy, face pale and breathing heavily with the right side of his body covered in blood, lurched forward and fell against him.

A muffled, gravelly voice reached Jason’s ears--“ _S’okay,_ ” Roy was uttering, his left hand creeping up laboriously to clutch at the front of Jason’s jacket, under which his heart jolted from a burst of pain that spread instantly to the whole of him and made his entire body tremble. “--It’s okay, Jaybird. I’m here with you...”

His eyes grew hot and turned to sting.

The black sword slid off Jason’s fingers, hitting the ground in a clank. He brought up his hands swiftly and moved them toward Roy, who was shaking and losing a great deal of blood and his consciousness in fast.

With the black streams in him draining away, the murk began to fade from Jason’s eyes, and everything he saw gradually restored into their natural, vivid colors.

Up there in the sky, the sun was glowing a sunny yellow; the pond of blood near his feet was crimson red, whilst the loose strands of hair in his hot, misty eyes were red with a warm tinge of gold.

As Essence behind him continued her task, Jason stood rooted to the spot, with his eyes staring out intently at the severed arm, his own arms enclosing Roy and keeping him from collapsing fully on the ground.

The power from the Well of Sin was hollowing out of him. Although he could feel that, he could no longer bring himself to care and react.

At the moment, his mind was in a maelstrom, and he could barely think of anything but the question of whether or not he was going to wake up in a moment and find out this was all just another nightmare.

 

***

 

In a long time, he was lurching to and fro between dreaming and waking. Everything he saw was a blur, and as soon as he tried to work his throbbing head and make sense of the pieces of what he saw, the imagery would begin to warp and shift into an entirely different picture.

For a long time, he felt like he was caught in a vortex of the present and the past and the echoes from places far beyond reach.

One moment, he found himself lying on a surgical bed, with strangers in white coat bustling around him, working to fix what’s wrong with his body; and the next, the ones who had been working to fix his body shifted into a pair of people he knew—people he supposed were his friends, for although they seemed a bit anxious and apprehensive about him, they were also acting so friendly to him in his vision, and he could tell they were friends, even he could not remember their names or where exactly he knew them from and he also kind of hated every second he had to be with them in the lab room where they had examined his defective body before working their genius minds to fix him, regardless of the fact that what truly broken in him was a thing they were incapable to fix.

And somewhere between the complete strangers and the pair of geniuses with names he couldn’t remember, came some other people he did know perfectly of their names and who they were to him; some of which he tried to reach out to as soon as he had caught sight of--the ones he knew as the dearest to him—They seized his hand with their owns, he could feel it but he wasn’t sure if it had really happened, for everything in his field of vision kept falling into shards and reforming back and forth in a rapid rate.

There’s also a whole other bunch of people he saw at some random point--A fine group of young friends he remembered seeing before once or twice in his sleep.

Just like the men from the lab room, he couldn’t quite say those people’s names, or where he had known them from or how they had become friends, and he had never gotten to keep a bit of memories of them but a vague stab of sorrow and emptiness in his heart whenever should he turn awake from dreaming; but their occasional visit in his sleep had always brought him such warmth, which seemed to be too real and too substantial coming from a reverie, and even though he couldn’t really remember them, he had always remembered that he loved them and cared about them, just as much as he did his two friends in the real life.

At some point, the girl came too.

He didn’t remember any more about her than he could the young friends from his reverie, and he had never known how she looked like, given that he had never captured a good look of her face in his dreaming—He didn’t know who she was, didn’t even know how many times he had dreamt of her, wouldn’t even have known he had ever had a dream about her, if not for the pain in his heart and the tears on his face he would always come to find each time he woke up from seeing her.

And right now, he saw her—the dark-haired little darling with eyes like emeralds, and a smile so bright that every time she shone him one, he would be lighted in whole.

However, she didn’t smile all the way through his vision. She never did.

Same as the great many times of dreaming he had little memory of in his waking, it was only after a few moments that everything in his vision turned to crumple and her smile fell and she began to scream and cry in upmost despair.

She was supposed to be right beside him—he had just held her hand in his own a moment ago--but somehow, she wasn’t with him.

Alone, she was standing precariously under a crumpling building in a collapsing city, far off from where he was--but not so far that he couldn’t see her. Her face was swam with tears and red from crying, and her little arms were stretching out to his way.

He ran toward her as fast as he could, but the city was falling and she was too far away. “-- _Help--_ ” Her cries were the only part of her he could manage to reach. “-- _Help me, Da--_ ”

With a gasp, he woke up.

 

***

 

His heart was pounding so fast and so hard, it made his head throb and his eyes dizzy and he could barely breathe.

In a faint amber glow of light, he sat with his eyes squeezed shut, hunching forward slightly and ran a hand through his face which was wet with sweat and, for reasons he couldn’t quite recall, some tears. His other hand was lying at his side, enclosed safely in a warm firm hold that he could tell who it from with half a mind and without looking. (--When he woke up, he was surprised to find that the warm, comforting touch of hand, through which he had found his way back to the present, didn’t disappear with the rest of his dream. He glanced around with confusion, and saw that the guy had come back from his night prowling and was now slumping asleep in the couch in which Roy had dozed off alone earlier—As far away as the guy was slumping opposite him in the other corner of the couch, the distance between them didn’t seem to have much significance when a hand of his was lying out, holding Roy’s loosely in the middle space. Roy regarded the hand in wonder, then gave it a light, testing squeeze, which the guy appeared to be too deep in sleep to notice and show any reaction towards. Looking around to the front, he sat trying to remember what he had previously dreamt of. He couldn’t recall anything, only his face was a bit damp and there’s a dull pang in his heart from which he knew he must have dreamt about something that was quite sad. Sweeping his free hand over his damp face, he turned to consider whether or not he should leave for bed. His neck got a bit stiff from falling asleep on the couch--He tipped his head to the side, and after a moment of staring off at the sleeping face across him, he leaned his head back to the armrest and reclosed his eyes, his hand remained lying out restfully in Jason’s.)

The guy was sitting at the side of his bed, in the same natural and quiet way he had done once or twice when he had found Roy roused by some strange dreams of memories he couldn’t remember and sitting alone in the deep of night, drained and distraught.

It didn’t happen often, or it didn’t happen as often as a while back when Ollie had first kicked him out on the streets and he was all alone and had little idea of who he was or what he's supposed to be or where he belonged. And he never tried to calm Roy the way Roy would him, never made much noise upon his entrance--just came up and sat beside him, and he never asked any question, nor would he turn to talk until Roy started to. Sometimes he would sit closely so their shoulders could lean on one another; sometimes he would even put a hand on Roy’s, though he only did that when he thought no one was watching and Roy might be too occupied by his own thoughts to pay much attention to it, and he always drew his hand away soon as Roy was feeling better—It might not seem much, but it was enough.

After sitting in bed for a few moments with his eyes shut and his face in his palm, his heartbeat slowed to normal and his splitting headache turned to ease, and he began to realize the odd sensations he had been missing.

Confused by the coldness and the flinty texture of his hand, he brought it down from his face, and was getting so shocked by the look of it, he didn’t realize until much later that Jason’s hand had stirred and loosened its hold of his left hand.

He glared in astonishment at what was now his right hand, moving its palm back to front carefully while he assessed it, and for a long moment, he could think of no reason why the entire lower part of his right arm--started from his elbow to his hand--would turn into a sleek, grey, glossy piece of metal and thought he might be still dreaming.

Only a while later, his memory rushed back to him—the recollection of his arm being severed from his body and the burst of severe pain it had set off was the first that came, and it brought along with it a phantom stab that went straight through the right half of his body, and the belated fright of losing his dominant arm.

He clenched his hands into fists and screwed his eyes shut at once. Then in a moment, when he turned to relax once more, he gave the tech another assessment, raising its arm slightly and swaying it to and fro; it wasn’t as heavy as it looked, and much to his comfort, it ran smoothly at his command. When he wriggled the fingers, he found them a bit stiff at first, but the more he moved them the more fluid their motion became.

The cybernetic arm seemed to be just as “handy” as a real arm.

Certainly, it might have to take him some time to get fully adjusted to, and he couldn’t really feel the texture of anything with it—but at the very least, he still had an arm he could use.

Putting down his right arm, he turned to take a look at his surrounding, and found himself and Jason alone in a large room with glowing pendant lights and exquisite furniture and fine Arabic setting which told him there’s high chance he was still somewhere in the sacred city of 'Eth Alth'eban.

The fact they were still in this cursed city made Roy a bit anxious; but at least Jason was alive and here with him, and looking considerably better with his skin no longer covered by a black glow and his eyes clear of the eerie murk that had taken over the blueness of his irises and his sclera in whole--unlike how Roy had last seen him in the city center.

Presently, he turned around to Jason, who was sitting in an armchair at the side of his bed, both of his hands were now drooping down and closing together loosely over his lap.

Roy started mildly, voice hoarse from sleep, “Nice eyes. I like how unfreakish they are. Where did you get the exorcism?”

“Essence,” he answered, “but only if you call shoving a magic hand inside your body and pulling the living evil magic out of you an exorcism.”

“How is she?”

“Gone,” said Jason curtly, then added a moment later when he saw Roy looking at him with an anxious stare, “She’s alive, thanks to you. She left with her mother after helping me out with you. The _sword_ …the one I used that cut off your arm—was linked with the nasty magic, and it infected your wound and gave you a fever. She helped heal it so we could bring you alive to the medic—Then she took off. I think she might’ve said something about going to restore the All-Caste, I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Roy nodded at that, relieved to find that Jason didn’t kill her. The last thing he remembered seeing in the city center after Cheshire had brought him back was Jason looking like he was possessed and swinging a sword at the woman. He didn’t know what had gone down between them, all he had known was something bad had happened to the guy, and if it wasn’t for it, he would never have done something as crazy as trying to kill his own ex-girlfriend, who had never seemed to have any hostility towards them but appeared to be on their side this whole time.

Surely, the man wasn’t at all new to killing—in fact, from what Roy had heard, he had drawn quite some blood back in the days. But he was no longer living in the old days. Upon all this time he had known Jason, he had never really seen him kill anyone if not necessary. Jason had never said it, but Roy knew he had been trying to be better than who he used to be, and he knew it’s no cakewalk for him but he was doing so great. And no doubt that killing his own ex-girlfriend would be a certain way to destroy the incredible achievement he had made so far, if not driving him into somewhere terrible he might not be able to come back from.

Neither was Roy himself new to killing people, and as much as he rather he didn’t, he did see that how sometimes killing might really be the only way to solve a problem; but he knew--and he knew Jason knew it also--that there’re some lines just not supposed to be crossed.

As he sat in the bed studying Jason, he found on his usually clean-shaven face some serious five o’clock shadow, which he knew the man wouldn’t have got if he wasn’t on the run and having absolutely no time to shave, or if he wasn’t getting too worn out to bother. Unlike Roy, he rarely forgot to keep his appearance neat and clean. Roy could remember he had said to him once something about how it had helped keeping him sharp and “clean body clean mind” and all that, but he figured that the guy was just vain and liked to look dashing.

Roy started again in a moment, while wondering how long Jason had been sitting with him in here, “How are you doing?”

“I’m not the one who just lost an arm.”

“It’s an arm, man. I’ve got two of them.” He lifted his right arm slightly and made a small wave with its hand, “And unless I’m wrong and this is actually an extra size Swiss Army knife, I’d say I still have an arm—Not the most sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, but it looks nice enough. And you know I do into robot.”

He was hoping if it couldn’t crack a smile out of Jason, at least it would get him to lose that grave look on his face; but the man just remained staring at him with eyes like dead coals and face of cold flinty granite.

“We’re in good luck that the castle have a pack of scientists and rooms full of techs,” replied Jason with a flat note of sarcasm in his voice. “The scientist built this for you, and put it into use with the doctors.”

Roy gave a faint hum at that, not really cared who did what to his arm. He still had two arms and they were both working, that’s as much as he needed to know right now.

“I thought you killed someone in the League,” he pointed out reflectively, “—Those guys must’ve been much nicer than I thought, if they’d lend us their medic and their science guys and let us stay in their house after that.”

“It’s the League of Assassins, not the League of Super Friends. Some of them got killed, the others get over it and move on.”

He supposed so; but still, it seemed awfully nice of them to have their people build him a cybernetic arm and give him a surgery and such. He couldn’t imagine they would’ve done any of those if someone hadn’t ordered them to.

Although he didn’t quite like the idea of Jason having to act like he was their leader, he got that how it was necessary for the man to do such considering the situation. Roy had needed emergency care, so he had gotten it from the League by playing friends with them, that’s all.

Shaking away the faint shade of unrest from his head, Roy continued, “How long we’ve been in here? And where’s Kori?”

“She’s off to get some sleep, or some air. But I’m sure she’s close,” Jason said, “You’ve been out for three days. She stayed with you as much as she could, but I don’t think she’s very comfortable being here, with the League hanging around and all.”

“That makes two of us,” replied Roy lightly, then turned to move himself off the bed. He was wearing nothing at the moment but a white linen robe. And although he had no problem of starting onto the road without some proper equipment and even shoes, he was quite pleased to find that his Arsenal suit, washed and perfectly repaired after the mayhem, was resting neatly on top of a laurel wood drawer across the room, with a pair of combat boots standing below it on the floor.

Putting down his bare feet from the bed, he said, “I’m up now, so lets get going.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Puzzled, he paused for a beat. Then he sat down again presently on the edge of the bed, looking at Jason with his brows knitting together into a concerned frown.

“Tell me you’re not still brainwashed and thinking you’re their leader,” he began in a rueful tone. Jason shrugged, sitting fixed in the chair.

“I told you I didn’t get brainwashed.”

“Then what the _fuck_ do you mean you’re not going anywhere with me?” returned Roy sharply, in a sudden rise of temper.

It wasn’t until the words were out did he realize how harsh he was sounding. He licked his chapped lips anxiously, spending a second to ease himself and push away the growing agitation, then began again in a mild tone, “--C’mon, Jaybird, you’re alive and the world didn’t end, which means you must’ve taken care of that whole evil-immortals problem. It seems to me whatever you have to do in here, you’ve done it. So lets just bounce and get home—We can just go home now, Jay. The League think you’re their leader, right? Not their _prisoner_. So now they won’t stop you from going anywhere. And if they do, we can still make a break for it.”

“It’s not about what the League think, or what they may do,” replied Jason, clearly and plainly. “Bronze Tiger have been asking me to stay, but I’ve decided I’d only stay until you wake up. Now you’re awake, I’m leaving. And I’m leaving on my own.”

A curt, incredulous huff of laughter drifted out Roy’s mouth. He shook his head. “No, no you see, that’s where you lost me,” he said, “--Why the hell would you be leaving on your own? Why wouldn’t you be coming home with us?”

“Because I can’t. Not after what happened in here.”

Frowning, he watched it in agitation as Jason turned to hunch his back slightly in the chair and cast down his eyes onto his entwined hands.

In a moment, the man looked up at Roy and started, blue eyes gleaming livid in the amber glow of light above them, “--The League didn’t brainwash me, but they did do something. They’ve used this machine on me, put me through—I don’t know, _hundreds_ , of virtual reality simulations. Where they had me believed they did brainwash me, and controlled me into killing you and Kori. It wasn’t the only scenario, and I think the details sometimes got a bit different after they restarted the program. But that’s mostly what happened—They got me, they took control of me, I got back with you guys and tried to kill the both of you. And it always ended with someone’s death, that’s the one thing that never changed, no matter what scenario it was. I watched Kori die by my hands, Roy—hundreds of times. I watched you die too.”

 _Fuck._ A blow of nausea roused Roy’s stomach. He clenched his fists at his sides.

He knew Jason wouldn’t have acted the way he had acted in the city center if the League hadn’t messed with his head. But _this_ —the things he had gone through in those last couple of weeks--Just by imagining that was enough to make Roy sick.

Pressing down the sickness in his stomach, he said, swiftly and earnestly, “What the League did to you is fucked-up. But it _wasn’t real--_ ” Naturally, he leaned forward in the edge of the bed and reached out his hand to Jason’s. He didn’t think about which hand he reached out, since it wasn’t a question he used to be thinking.

It was the right one, the dominant one. The one he almost always relied on before it was gone and replaced by a piece of metal.

Before the cybernetic hand could touch his flesh ones, Jason lowered his hands from his lap and stepped up. “It felt real,” he said, standing before Roy at the side of the armchair. “Everything I saw in there, everything I touched, everything I did. It really happened—me killing Kori, you dying. Honestly, now that I look at you, I can still see it. Your death.”

He rose up quickly from the bed. “It didn’t happen in here, the _real_ world. You didn’t kill us. Kori didn’t die. _I_ didn’t die—Here, look,” again, his hand reached out. The left hand this time, since it was the one Jason had been holding all along while he had been staying at Roy’s side waiting for him to wake up from his long sleep. He wasn’t sure how exactly Jason was feeling about the metal hand, but he wasn’t going to test it right now.

With his left hand, he caught Jason’s wrist, dragging its palm onto his own chest so the man could feel for himself the heartbeat underneath. “--Does it feel dead to you?”

Seeing Roy reaching out, Jason was at first going to back away; but Roy was in front of him and was moving his hand fast. Transfixed, Jason stood with his hand seized under Roy’s and being pressed tightly over the middle of his chest, not seemed to be able to do anything for a few moments except standing there and feeling how Roy’s heart pounded under his palm in a strong, steady rhythm.

In the soft amber glow of pendant lights above them, Roy thought that he saw a shade of emotions passing Jason’s face. Then the man looked up once more and it was gone.

Hand sliding away from Roy’s chest, Jason spoke in a slow speed, face flinty and voice deep with a strange resolution, “—In the real world, the Well of Sin got to me. Just like the League did in the virtual reality. It got into my head, and I almost killed you. I cut off your arm, Roy. _That_ happened.”

“The Well of Sin _got to you._ It _wasn’t you--_ ” spat Roy roughly in turn, trying once again to hold his hand out to Jason, who was stepping slowly away.

Roy followed him down to the middle of the room. “What happened to my arm was an _accident_ —You’re clearly possessed, and I was the one who ran under a moving sword, just like I was the one who came into this city,” he said, and stretching out his right hand when he saw Jason showing no intention to stop but just keep on moving.

The cybernetic hand caught Jason by his shoulder and pulled him to a halt.

Roy continued, keeping his hand on Jason’s shoulder and hoping in doing so, it would make clear of the fact that he could handle the prosthesis, “--I could’ve lost more than my arm coming here, and I could’ve lost more than my arm every single day just by going out in my suit and doing what we do every single day--If you didn’t bring Kori to save me in _Qurac_ , it wouldn’t have mattered how many arms I have, because I would’ve been dead _for real_ \--We made the decision of putting on our suits, we accepted the fact that we’re putting ourselves at risks. We make decisions, and a lot of time, it comes with some consequences. I made a decision of running under a sword three days ago and it turned out to be a bad call with bad consequences. That’s all. That’s what happened--You been through a lot, Jason. The League messed with your head, they fucking mind tortured you _for weeks_ —so I get that you might be having trouble to think clear, but _you can’t--”_ A lump of hotness rose to his throat then. He swallowed it down, squeezing his eyes shut to fight back the start of welling in them.

Once he had got himself back in order, he went on again with an insistence, “You can’t just leave. Why would you have to leave us because of an accident that happened when you’re not yourself? Did you even talk to Kori about this? Does she know you’re going to leave us?”

“She knows. I talked to her, she respects my decision, I think you should too,” replied Jason in a plain voice. “And you’re wrong, Roy. I _was_ myself. The Well of Sin got to my head, sure. But it didn’t make me a different person, if anything, it had reminded me exactly who I was, who I’ll always be—I didn’t need to kill Graystone back there, but I did it because I can and it’d save me the trouble of dealing with him. And I almost killed Essence because I wanted to, because she was getting in my way.”

“That might be what you’re thinking when you had crazy evil magic in your head. But it wasn’t _who you are--_ ”

Letting out a curt laughter, Jason shook his head slightly. “You see, this—this right here is exactly why I can’t go with you,” he said, looking at Roy with a faint cold smile dangling on his lips, and his eyes gleaming in the amber glow of lights both drearily and ironically. “--You never can see who I am because you always see the good in people. You always see me much better than what I really, _truly_ am. And _I want_ …I hope I can be the person you see is me, Roy. I tried, I thought I could be him, but I’m not. I’m not the person you think I am, I’ll never be the person you think I am. I’ll only always be that guy who doesn’t care how many people or what people he has to hurt or kill to get what he wants, the guy you saw back there who took away your arm--You’re right it was an accident. I didn’t mean to do that. But that’s me.”

“I don’t know if it’s the evil magic or the mind tortures, but you’re not thinking straight. Just listen to me, Jay—just come home with me, and we’ll figure out what’s the problem and we’ll figure out how to _fix it--_ ”

Jason broke him off mildly with an amused snort, “It really is easier, isn’t it? To think it’s all just the dark magic, just the mind conditioning—just the Joker, just the death, just _the Lazarus Pit_ , and not me all along.”

Looking directly in Roy’s eyes, he said, “There’s nothing to fix, Roy. There’s nothing either of us can fix.”

As the indefinite dread grew inside Roy bigger and bigger, he found his skin prickle and a start of pain come over the right side of his upper body.

With a tender look on his face, Jason was saying, “This whole time I was with you, I felt like I was better. Somehow, being with you, everything seemed to be better--We had a good time. But now I’m awake, I can see the times we had were an escape. And I can only escape reality for so long.”

“You can’t just take off like this,” gritted Roy in distress. The phantom pain in him was increasing. His right shoulder hurt, but it wasn’t his shoulder. It wasn’t his arm. It was _never_ his arm. He could live without an arm or two—he could afford that. There’re things in this world a lot more worse than losing an arm, a lot more worse than even death.

The loss of an arm wasn’t the kind of loss he couldn’t afford. “You can’t just walk away from me like this-- ** _From us_** —” His eyes fixed madly upon Jason, bleary and strained from anguish. “Damn it, Jay, you can’t just walk away from us.”

“I don’t even think there’s supposed to be an ‘us’,” replied Jason in a whisper that was so small and so soft, it almost missed Roy’s ears.

After which, he turned away, leaving Roy’s hand to fall limply back to his side.

It didn’t look any different in Roy’s eyes, the sight of Jason turning away. He did that a lot. A lot of time he would pull back when Roy was getting too close. And Roy always let him, because Roy had no reason to stop him. Because he wasn’t sure where the line of his friendship with Jason was drawn.

They might not know each other their whole lives, but they knew each other good and well, or at least Roy had always believed he knew Jason just as goodly as Jason knew him.

He said he didn’t, but Roy knew who he was--He knew he was the person who would sit at his bedside, holding his hand and watching over him until he came back from a swoon in which a traumatic incident had put him; the person who didn’t often sleep well and would always drink the hot cocoa Roy would sometimes made for him to sooth his nerves after he had a nightmare, even though Roy didn’t often have the marshmallows to put in it, even though he always said he would rather have something with more kicks.

He was the person who enjoyed the trills from the jobs just as much as Roy did and would always do good with his jobs. The person who liked a scorching hot shower, and shaved regularly; the person who would sit on the couch with Roy after works and make snarky remarks about whatever shows or movies they were watching.

He was the person who had helped Roy out a long while back from a bar fight, where Roy had lost everything and had with him nothing but the bottles, where they had met each other for the first time, where he had stood before Roy in his old Robin suit, all cocky smile and dazzling confidence—and told Roy how everyone could use a friend sometimes, and that he could give Roy a hand any time should he needed one.

He was the person who saved Roy’s life, going all the way to Qurac to rescue him from an execution when no one else would; and Roy knew there’s no way he would’ve known he needed a rescue at all, if he hadn’t been keeping an eye on him. If he didn’t care.

The person Roy trusted with his whole life, whose presence had fastened him to the present, steady as an anchor, and shielded him safely away from the shards of beingless memories and the constant, overwhelming sense of emptiness they had brought up.

Jason said Roy didn’t see who he was, but he saw him perfectly well. He knew him, and he--

A full blown realization came to Roy on a sudden. At once, he spoke up, hating the fact he didn’t get to say it under better circumstances, but knowing clearly if he didn’t say it right now, he might never have a chance to say it at all, “I never told you this, but _I love--_ ”

“I know.”

His brows creased right away into a confused frown.

Jason turned around slightly to face him. And upon his sombre face, Roy could see that somehow, he did know. “How would you know? I don’t even think I know until just now.”

“I didn’t just fight crimes with Batman back in the days, Roy. I also investigated crimes with him,” Jason replied, lips twitching up slightly into a doleful smile. “One of the first tricks Batman taught me was how to read body language and micro expressions. All I need to do is pay attention, watch for people’s eyes like he always told me, then I’ll see.”

“Then you must see how I can’t let you leave like this,” Roy stepped forward and said, “I came here to _find you_ , Jay. I didn’t come all the way here just to lose you.”

“What can you possibly do?”

It was only a retort, Roy knew that from the plain tone; but he decided he would take it as a dare instead.

He hoped that they could just talk, but he had already tried that and it didn’t work. Now he had to try something else. He would try and he would try— _everything_ to bring him home, including the use of force (-- _He’s not losing anyone ever again. He couldn’t_ ).

With a stride, Roy came up, reaching his quick hand behind Jason’s waist, and seized with it one of the handguns Jason was carrying on his body.

Judging by the look of it, there’s no doubt that the cybernetic arm had got in it some useful functions such as weaponry; only he couldn’t really test that at the moment without giving it a thorough study and figuring out just what sort of damages it might do first.

His left hand moved up, capturing Jason by his forearm while his right one pressing the gun firmly against Jason’s stomach.

“Seriously,” started Jason in a dry voice, after giving the gun a look. “You’re going to shoot me?”

“Trust me, man, I have plenty of practice of shooting people without killing them,” he said swiftly, “And it won’t hurt much more than the time I accidentally shot you with that trick arrow.”

Undoubtedly, Jason could handle a bullet or two; the only problem was injuring Jason would hardly ensure the result of stopping him, but would most likely be a certain way to agitate him. Shooting the guy wouldn’t help Roy bringing him home, he needed to knock him out.

“Idiot,” was what Jason said, before he moved up on a sudden.

Roy was just about to swing the gun against his head to knock him unconscious, when Jason seized his cybernetic hand with his own flesh one and ground his lips up against Roy’s.

And suddenly, Roy found himself moving, pushed further and further backward by the force upon him toward a destination where he neither knew or cared.

All he cared right now was _**here**_ ; all he needed right now was **_him_**.

The gun fell to the floor as he loosened his hold on it and brought his hand instinctually to Jason’s waist, seizing him fast and close with the metal grip while his left hand slid up to the back of the man’s neck and turned quickly to tingle from the warm touch of skin it sensed upon its flesh.

With his arms encircled round Roy and keeping them fully linked, Jason moved them all the way across the room, until a few moments later, Roy’s feet hit the pair of combat boots that was standing under the laurel wood drawer and teetered.

The road he and Jason had been going ended with Roy hitting his legs against the wooden drawer.

The arms around Roy quietly fell off. Giving Roy one last sweet long nibble on his bottom lip, Jason drew away slightly, and turned to look at him with a strange glow dawning in his azure eyes.

Dazed from the long kiss and the raging passion of it, Roy didn’t get why--why the sadness, the painful resolution in his eyes.

Why would Jason be looking at him like this after he had just kissed him like that, why would he be looking like--

 _It’s a goodbye_.

The realization of Jason was still determined on leaving did not come to Roy until he felt a sting on his neck and his head was seized at once with an instant qualm of faintness.

He swung out his arms wildly and pushed Jason off with a mad, distressed grunt. Next to where his Arsenal suit was resting neatly on top of the drawer, sat a plate of injection equipment, upon which one of the sedative syringes was missing.

“I know you’re going to hate me for a while, but you’ll get over it,” Jason said, putting down the empty syringe back on the top of the drawer, then moved presently to Roy who was stumbling about and almost fell headlong on the floor.

Catching Roy’s straying hands, he moved him down into sitting upon the floor slowly and easily.

The darkness was closing in. Before Roy was taken fully by the darkness, he heard the sound of Jason saying, “Goodbye, Roy. Stay safe.” And somewhere inside Roy, sounded along a clear, definite “-- ** _crack_** ”.

 

 

 

 


End file.
